Characters / Better Call Saul: Kim Wexler

Main Character Index | Breaking Bad
Lawyers (Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, Kim Wexler, Chuck McGill), Law Enforcement, Juarez Cartel, Los Pollos Hermanos, Omaha, Petty Criminals, Other Characters

Kimberly "Kim" Wexler

Portrayed By: Rhea Seehorn, Katie Beth Hall (young, "Wexler v. Goodman", "Axe and Grind")

Appearances: Better Call Saul

"You don't save me. I save me."

^{Kim in 2010 (spoilers)} "I don't know what kind of life you've been living, but it can't be much."

"I know we're never supposed to say our clients are guilty, but, hey, not my client anymore."

A skilled and determined attorney, Kim Wexler has worked her way up from humble beginnings. Kim is committed to practicing law how she sees fit, inside the confines of HHM or out, while juggling her complex relationship with Jimmy and the disparate expectations of her bosses and partners.

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A-C

• Abusive Parents: Implied, as Kim would rather walk the long way home from school than ride home with her (very drunk) mom. There may have been physical abuse as well, as if she's touched too fast she flinches. Her father's out of the picture entirely.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Mike stops her from killing Gus (or his Body Double), she has a Freak Out, anxiously babbling that she has to do what she was told.
• The Alcoholic: Has inherited this trait from her mother, as she's often shown drinking (and never actually drunk, her calls to old friends imply she was a Hard-Drinking Party Girl) or smoking when she's stressed out.
• Alcoholic Parent: Kim's mother had a drinking problem. It's implied they have a strained relationship in Kim's adulthood partly due to this.
• Allergic to Routine: She's jealous early on of Jimmy's interestingly bad days, is insecure enough to think that any lull in her relationship means it's time for a scam, changed her Con Woman lifestyle because the way she was going she'd just be working checkouts, and she quickly gets sick of banking law and Mesa Verde, getting excited by hard PD work.
• All Girls Like Ponies: When Jimmy is thinking about getting an actual house, she loosens her Commitment Issues mask a little and tells him he should get a horse because it'd be worth it.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys:
  • What she's got going on with Jimmy? Kim is definitely more understanding of his conning than most good girls should be, put it that way. She has her reservations, though: she does constantly throw up walls about totally getting into and behind the things he does. Although she had a relationship with him (presumably) before knowing him being a con man, it's his conning of KEN WINS that reawaken it in season 2.
  • She has a... complicated relationship with “Saul Goodman”, to put it mildly, going from angry and confused when Jimmy goes deeper into the conning (that he admits to doing it because he hates himself doesn’t help) to get in on that coping mechanism herself, but the first glimpse she sees of him she also can’t help but be intrigued.
• Always Save The Boy: Tends to step in when Jimmy visibly gives up, her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Lalo coming when Jimmy is about to break and tell the guy what really happened in the desert, and firmly telling him in "Sunk Cost" that he's not alone when he's about to just give Chuck what he wants. Also willing to kill so his life could be saved. Even after their disaster phone call in "Breaking Bad/Waterworks", she still drafts a confession that's half inverted Self-Serving Memory blaming herself for what went down, and half a slightly true defence for him to say he was coerced into everything.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: It's implied that Kim's father wasn't really present in her life as a child and that her mother was her primary caregiver. Rhea Seehorn revealed that she played it as her dad was a Con Man, in and out of their lives, any gifts were stolen and they lived in a trailer.
• Ambition Is Evil: When she's cutting corners to try and get what she wants fast, or using people who will help her out, then it's evil. She takes this way too far at the end of "Fun and Games", as she thinks she shouldn't have wanted anything more than her hometown.
• Amicable Exes: Kim and Jimmy are implied to have been romantic partners before breaking it off and remaining friends by the time of season one, though this of course changes by season two. Subverted after their divorce in season six, as they're still painfully in love with each other, but he pushes her away and goads her into confessing, and she refuses to have any good in her life while also being aware that her Jimmy is buried under Saul/Gene. They're later reunite though, their love the only Splash of Color amidst the grey, and it's heavily implied they're back on, even if they can't be physically together.
• Amoral Attorney: Initially averted but then increasingly played straight as her relationship with Jimmy leads to her compromising her morals and professional ethics a lot. However, she is really remorseful for this and tries to balance her karma by taking pro bono public defense cases as she grows disillusioned with her Mesa Verde career. The problem is, her ethic is still not great during pro bono case, because she will break some rules to save her clients from themselves like tricking them into taking a plea deal when they wanted to chance at court because it's a dumb move that will cost their child a lot. And on the side of Jimmy's cons, she gets a bigger and bigger high with each con, with her only concern being just not getting caught. She completely falls into this trope by the end of Season 5 when she plans to frame Howard and destroy his career to get the money from the Sandpiper case, which comes to fruition in Season 6. The fallout of this plan makes Kim realize how far she's fallen and she abandons her law career so she can no longer be this trope.
• Animal Motif: Cats. She's been explicitly compared to a house cat who finally gets to go outside in season six, she's standoffish to anyone she doesn't know and loyal to those she loves, fellow cat-coded Lalo thinks she's as sociopathic as he is, she's smart as hell but has a nasty side and it takes her a while to be comfortable showing off who she is.
• Anger Born of Worry: In “Waterworks”, having been viciously poked into telling him off, and feeling like it’s her fault he’s self-destructing so badly anyway, she tells Gene to turn himself in as the life he’s living now must be pathetic.
• Anti-Villain: Type IV. Kim is a genuinely kind-hearted and hardworking lawyer who wants to help the downtrodden and unfortunate. Unfortunately, her Undying Loyalty to Jimmy and attraction to his con man lifestyle lead to her increasingly compromising moral and ethical lines as she turns a blind eye to or outright becomes an accomplice to his criminal activities. By the end of Season 5, she seems to be heading into Well-Intentioned Extremist territory, with her rationalizing that doing a bad thing like framing Howard is justified as long as the money goes towards a good cause.
• The Atoner: Because she knows Jimmy can push down the guilt (except when it’s anything to do with her, then it’s all he feels) and will absolve her of everything, she realizes it has to be her to take action. Of course, she takes it too far and Kim Wexler as the show knows her is dead, vanishing away from everyone.
  • She becomes this by the end of Season 6, revealing the truth about Howard's murder and wanting to clear his reputation from the scams she pulled off on him.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Jimmy is an ex-con and a slimeball of a lawyer at best. Kim is a straight-laced, hardworking attorney in all the best ways. Yet they both clearly, deeply, and completely love each other, supporting each other's decisions, and accepting the other's best and worst parts like no one else, no matter how often they argue.
• Badass Pacifist: Kim hates violence, she hates that Jimmy is involved with violent people, but if you dare threaten him, she will stand in your way and spit pure logic in your face until you back off. She doesn't care if you're the psychotic head of a drug cartel:
  Jimmy McGill: "Did you hear all that?"
  Mike Ehrmantraut: "I heard enough to know she saved your ass."

  -"Bad Choice Road"
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Kim may have encouraged her husband to become Saul, for comfort, happiness and kink, but she’s horrified (and blames herself) by what her Loveable Rogue has turned into in “Waterworks”, just replacing everything with a calcified coping mechanism.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: By Season 6, Kim's confronted dangerous criminals, blackmailed former clients, spear-headed petty revenge schemes (all of which she's implied to get a power rush from), and even hid from Jimmy the fact Lalo was still alive so she and Jimmy could continue their fun and games. This is a far-cry from the Kim of Season 2 who, even while dating Jimmy, made every effort to stay out of and voice her disapproval of his criminal activities and would never consider lying to her lover's face. Kim realizes this has happened when her behavior leads to fatal consequences and, no longer able to stand herself, abandons her old life.
• Because I'm Good At It: Even though Kim initially tries to distance herself from Jimmy’s bad side, when she does participate in his cons, she “excels” at it and always gets a rush.
• Becoming the Mask: An interesting example by Season 6 where Kim appears to be encouraging Jimmy to embrace this trope, offering suggestions for how Jimmy can strengthen his Saul Goodman persona. The most notable instance is shortly after Jimmy's boxing match against Howard where, far from believing Jimmy's black eye will be a disadvantage in court, Kim considers it prime promotional material — "I'm Saul Goodman, *punch*, and I fight for you!" Judging by one of Saul's Breaking Bad-era commercials, he eventually agrees. Kim herself is an example, proceeding from keeping her scam life separate from her professional one through her character "Gisele" to blackmailing people straight to their faces over the course of the series to ruining people's careers for (supposedly) good reasons, but eventually, because she likes it.
• Being Personal Isn't Professional: Having to actually talk about her personal life at an interview, especially about her past, rattles her enough to call Rich Howard afterwards.
• Beneath Notice: All the men around her act like she’s some kind of morally pure but weak damsel taken on the bad road by Jimmy (with the possible exception of Mike, after seeing what she's capable of under fire). Even Jimmy, who should know her best, tends to assume his corruptive influence is to blame for her more morally-grey life-upending decisions. It’s partly what drives her to be More Deadly Than the Male in early season six.
• Beneath the Mask: For all that Kim puts on the appearance of a by-the-books lawyer, by Season 5, Kim gleefully upends her secure banking law career to roll around in the dirt with Jimmy and torment a hated ex-colleague together. If anything, she's even MORE ruthless than Jimmy at the scamming game. This is best demonstrated in the “Ethics Training With Kim Wexler” Season Five teaser, where Kim is shown to not quite believe what she's saying
• Berserk Button:
  • People backstabbing Jimmy, playing politics with him, or trying to insinuate he is of low character really tick her off. She visibly bristles with anger when a prosecutor refers to Jimmy as a "scumbag disbarred lawyer" (even if the professional environment means she can't retaliate) and absolutely explodes with rage when Howard tells her Jimmy will get a measly $5,000 from Chuck's will and what she presumes is a poison pen letter from the grave. Kim's Face–Heel Turn comes when Howard tells her that Chuck knew Jimmy best in a mildly condescending tone, which convinces her to get back at Howard by destroying his career.
  • The minute anyone tries to take her sense of agency away from her by implying that her actions are manipulated, especially by Jimmy, she gets pissed off like nothing else. Especially since the people who say this to her are entitled, towering figures in the legal or banking community, who have usually had lots of help getting to the top (Howard, for example, literally just got handed his job from his dad right out of law school).
    • As a smart, strong woman who is very much ruler of her own destiny, she is especially incensed by any suggestion that she is a naive, fragile damsel in thrall to Jimmy, such as when Chuck accuses Jimmy of having "ruined this fine young woman", or when Howard has the nerve to ask if her decision to quit her job at Schweikart and Cokely was influenced by Jimmy:
      "Do you have any idea how insulting that is? I make my own decisions."
  • Overall, being condescended to in anyway, as is the case with the above two buttons, absolutely infuriates Kim. It's a major reason why she goes from idolizing Chuck to hating him even more than Jimmy due to being constantly exposed to his colossal ego and patronizing behavior.
  • When Jimmy does actually lie to her and doesn't clue her in on whatever cons he's pulling, she's livid, feels alone and wants to kill him. Not that this stops her from proposing a "legal arrangement" where he can tell her stuff and she's under no threat to have to testify though. Nor does it prevent her from lying to him.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As nice as she is, Kim has a darker side to her that enjoys hurting people who (she thinks) deserve it. Her suggestion to ruin Howard's career in Season 5 makes even Jimmy stunned.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: She has integrity, genuinely wants good consequences (unlike Jimmy, who can be morally corrupt as long as he can get any form of approval, and this will cause friction between them), loves pro-bono work, and hates rich people, but she also thinks she can decide who deserves good and deserves bad, and over the course of the series, moves the goalposts on how low she’s willing to drop for those aforementioned “good consequences”. She has a Heel Realisation over all this in “Fun and Games”, wanting to both atone and self-flagellate, ending up a self-destructed shell of her former self.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: When Kim's getting ready to leave Jimmy for good, and he starts his usual routine of manic ranting and begging to let him fix things, she tells Jimmy the Awful Truth that she knew Lalo was still alive and how his response would ruin the fun they were having. She’s clearly trying to make it easier on him to hate her, but even this only stalls him enough
• Break the Cutie: She starts out really trying to be good, already with baggage from her past that she doesn’t want to talk about, and the combination of not admitted depression, being treated like crap at HHM, having no idea what she really wants, Chuck’s death and various other disappointments leads her on a darker path.
• Break the Haughty: Kim in Season 6 feels confident enough to hold the secret of Lalo Salamanca still being alive, who once broke into her home and threatened her and her husband at gunpoint, all while cooking up a extended plan to ruin Howard's life, laughing in his face when he shows up to confront them after it succeeds. After Lalo breaks in again, shoots Howard in the head, and threatens Kim into trying to assassinate Gus Fring, combined with having to lie to Howard's widowed wife afterward about what really happened, Kim's left an emotional wreck. She flees to Florida, shown years later to be an Empty Shell trying to make Miracle Whip work in potato salad because the supermarket her boyfriend shops at was out of stock for his favorite brand, unable to even voice an opinion on her preferred ice cream flavor. A big chunk of this is self-inflicted, feeling like she doesn't deserve anything good.
• Broken Ace: She’s a respected well-liked lawyer, but she’s carrying a lot of baggage in regards to her Dark and Troubled Past, tries to be far more normal than she actually is, doesn’t want to admit her own depression, and actually has a lot of self-loathing.
• Broken Bird: She's always been a little cracked, but by "Fun and Games" she breaks up her marriage and quits her job because she hates herself so much. Years later, the episode "Waterworks" would have viewers believe the old Kim Wexler is broken beyond repair, too afraid to make even simple choices. However, after confessing her part in Howard's death to his ex-wife, Kim appears to be trying to restore some semblence of her old self.
• Broken Pedestal: She used to geek out over Chuck when she was in the mailroom, but even then she had iffy feelings over how he treated his brother and lays the blame for how deeply insecure Jimmy is at Chuck’s feet. Rhea Seehorn said that even if Jimmy had told her about his brother's last words to him (“You never meant that much to me”), it wouldn’t have mattered because she hated the man enough already.
• Broken Tears: As hard as she's trying to set her face in “Point and Shoot”, terrified sobs at what she has to do still burst out intermittently. She also curls up weeping with relief in “Bad Choice Road” when Jimmy finally manages to call her.
• Brutal Honesty: Kim's specialty; be they her own clients, the man she loves most, the biggest names in Albuquerque law, or dangerous enforcers of criminal organizations, if Kim believes someone deserves a tongue lashing, she won't hesitate to dish it out.
• Byronic Hero: It takes a good long time for her to show off her more vulnerable side, she's attractive and charismatic but with very few actual friends that she even wants, she's really emotionally intelligent but she also thinks she alone can tell what people deserve and has a god complex, she has a Dark and Troubled Past and a lot of self-worth/insecurities, has a strong conscience that she'll sometimes bury and is truly passionate about the law.
• By-the-Book Cop: At the start, she wants to keep her social life and professional life completely separate, wanting to be Good in comparison to her past. However, she keeps getting hit by several harsh realities, and begins to cut more corners.
• Cassandra Truth: She's the first person (outside of Dr. Cruz) to realize that Chuck's illness is probably mental instead of physical, and looks deeply uncomfortable when put on the spot about it. She's also subconsciously aware first - along with Marco - that Chuck isn't as nice as he says he is, and her main concern in the start of that hospital scene is less that he's sick and more that her not-boyfriend is manic, losing it and might get taken away by the guard.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: Kim doesn’t particularly like talking about her emotions, and can be fairly awkward when faced with them, either noping out, focusing on practical solutions or talking about something else entirely.
• Character Development:
  • The negative version. "Hero" has her telling off Jimmy for having problems with Howard and making it personal. Five seasons later and she wants to ruin Howard so badly that she ruins a respectable career opportunity to ensure that their plan does not go awry.
  • She gets a lot braver with calling men out, her anxious body language in "Pimento" (and almost crying when Howard takes his frustration out on her) contrasted heavily with just full on yelling at Howard in "Breathe".
  • She goes from He Is Not My Boyfriend to others (but fond of him anyway) to looking and acting like she wants to murder if anyone disparages Jimmy.
  • In "Cobbler", she tells Jimmy never to tell her about his actual dubious dealings with the law (because she has experience with conning in her past, and is trying to not go back to it), but of course she keeps coming back, is better - at least technically - at the scams than he is, and by "Wine and Roses" she's excited to talk about ruining Howard and makes with the Puppy-Dog Eyes when Jimmy is uneasy for a few seconds.
  • She's always a few steps ahead of Jimmy. In early season six she's a version of Saul Goodman (and encouraging it for him too), finding it fun, a turn-on, and comforting, but the triple trauma of Howard's death, making it to Gus' house to nearly shooting him, and realizing how cruel she can be makes that and she implode, leaving her at the end of "Fun and Games" an Empty Shell like her own version of Gene.
  • After the rooftop fight, with her acting like Jimmy drags her into scams/helping him and him calling her out on it, she's more willing to admit that scheming with him is actually fun. Almost too much.
  • She eventually develops positively again. Despite reaching her lowest point in the aftermath of Howard's death, Kim reaches catharsis after confessing her role in it; she volunteers at legal aid instead of her Soul-Crushing Desk Job of brochure editing, she gets her Determinator sensibility back, and aside from some fun white lies of sneaking into her husband's prison as his lawyer, adopted a more honest outlook instead of beating herself up after the Lalo lie. Like Jimmy, after years of self-sabotage, she’s more at-peace with herself and their reconciled relationship.
• Characterisation Click Moment: She was originally meant to be a minor character and moral center for Jimmy, but then Rhea Seehorn improvised a grin at his antics in “Hero”, and from season two she had a far bigger role and grappled with her own dark side.
• Character Tics: Whenever she’s been terrified that Jimmy’s either dead or suffering, she always lets out the same breath of relief when she sees him alive and okay.
• The Charmer: As part of her being a great lawyer, and also her careful image of having no issues and being trustworthy, she's cultivated good relationships with just about everyone who could be important to a case. Or a con.
• Chivalrous Pervert: She likes her forceful kisses and making the first move, but no matter what Jimmy worries (or sometimes thinks he deserves), she's never going to force him into anything.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome:
  • Shows signs of this. While her job is all about trying to help people, she's shown to go out of her way to help others even in her free time. Acker accuses her of doing this so her conscience will be clear from the shitty things she does, and it's suggested she knows he has a point.
  • She also rushes in to save Jimmy whenever she can, has a tendency to treat him like a Damsel in Distress, but unlike Chuck she refuses to force anything on him, and in the finale, despite having really wanted him to get less years in jail and will help him with that, knows she also needs to work with him and not just swoop in.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: She'll often smoke to calm herself down and try to shove back an emotion that she doesn't want to be visible.
• City Mouse: Kim doesn't have fond memories of her small hometown on the Kansas-Nebraska border, and doesn't regret leaving for the big city of Albuquerque. When she later relocates to the much smaller city of Titusville, Florida, she is evidently bored and miserable. She has nothing in common with the locals and the only way she can try to fit in with them is by being as meek and inoffensive as possible.
• Commitment Issues: For a long time in the show, while Jimmy is a Living Emotional Crutch to her as well, she doesn't understand why he deems getting an office and getting a house as the only sign that she really loves him. This makes it a surprise when she's the one who proposes.
• Commonality Connection: She admits that she would have snapped if a family member betrayed her like Chuck did, and she had a fraught relationship with her mother growing up. And like Jimmy fleeing from his family and never calling until he gets into trouble, she left Red Cloud as fast as she could. It's also the reason why she sticks by Jimmy's side even after he drags her through the mud and even lies to her. As pissed off as she can be in response, as much as she may need time to process, she recognizes they share the same "survive-at-all-costs" instincts.
• The Confidant: For Jimmy. She doesn't know everything of course, but she clearly knows how badly Chuck has treated him his whole life, and Word of Vince is that she was lying when she told Chuck that Jimmy hadn't told her anything about his dad. That said, Jimmy disguises his pain and guilt over his brother's death by suicide behind a mask of indifference. This creates a rift in their relationship which is never fully mended until he literally confesses it on the stand.
• Conflicting Loyalties:
  • Between being a Crusading Lawyer and Con Woman, really wanting to genuinely help but spearheading all the huge scams in the series. In her Darkest Hour she destroys both identities, but the last we see of her is managing to blend the two in a healthy way, working in legal aid and taking advantage of her bar card not expiring to keep visiting Jimmy. According to Rhea Seehorn, she'll also be working to get him out faster while remaining on the up and up.
  • Between wanting to be punished and getting angry that there's consequences for her actions. When she feels bad she's Conscience Makes You Go Back, Martyr Without a Cause and seeking pain out, but when someone calls her out of their own volition, she's defensive, compartmentalizing and Never My Fault.
• Conscience Makes You Go Back: Her conscience might be buried sometimes, but it's shown from childhood that Kim needs both thrill and punishment.
  • After snapping at Acker when he refuses to move despite not being in the legal right, she goes back and tries to help him by suggesting they look for houses together. She's rejected, but it's the thought that counts.
  • Later she decides to clean up the remains of the bottles she and Jimmy threw into their apartment's parking lot, even after Jimmy points out that their groundskeeper is paid to do it.
  • After gaslighting Howard's wife, and realizing the guy she's in a Destructive Romance with will only ever absolve her of any wrong-doing, both her integrity and self-loathing lead her to blow up her entire life and flee to a life being a nobody.
  • In “Waterworks”, spurred on by Gene’s awful but (to her) accurate accusations that she should turn herself in too, Kim tells Cheryl the truth of what happened to Howard. It’s portrayed as selfish on her part, even if well-intentioned, and she breaks down crying on the bus.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Despite both being blonde leading ladies, Kim is the anti-Skyler in most aspects:
  • Skyler is a mother who is defined by her family, while Kim is firmly on the side of a career in the Family Versus Career spectrum.
  • Kim always has Jimmy's trust in his slide toward darkness, while Skyler was kept in the dark despite Walt's many suspicious behaviors.
  • Despite loving Walter, Skyler tended to be critical of him (which some have blamed for the excessive fan hostility towards her character and her actress, Anna Gunn). Kim is incredibly supportive of Jimmy in the things he does unless he hurts her career in some way.
  • Skyler was a failed novelist, while Kim is very competent at her job as a lawyer.
  • Skyler was a housewife who cheated on her husband (in fairness, only after she found out about his double life and was purposely trying to drive him away), while Kim starts off a single lady who nonetheless only has eyes for Jimmy.
  • Skyler had to be dragged kicking and screaming into Walt's criminal life, while Kim voluntarily becomes Saul's accomplice.
  • Skyler kept her nose clean for most of her life, while Kim used to be a Con Woman until a future as a cashier loomed and she wanted more than the shitty town which had treated her family badly.
• Consummate Liar: She calls herself out on it in “Wexler vs Goodman”, but uses it to try and enforce a Broken Pedestal with Jimmy in “Fun and Games”, telling him she knew about Lalo and lied to Jimmy not to protect him, but because he’d call off the Howard scam and she’d been having too much fun.
• Control Freak: Kim thinks she can decide who deserves good and who deserves bad and she’s been trying to restrain herself her whole life, so Jimmy’s schemes make her better and make her worse all at the same time. “Saul Goodman” as he is in Breaking Bad is just as much her creation as it is Jimmy’s.
• Con Woman: Implied heavily by the show, and confirmed by Rhea, is that her pre-lawyer life was a mess, and she’s familiar with scams, is very good at them, and has been around other scammers before. Naturally she takes to the role as Jimmy's accomplice pretty well.
• Corrupt the Cutie: She really wants to be an ethical lawyer but she also doesn't want to drive away Jimmy. The problem is Jimmy's help tends to involve disbarment-worthy offenses and her hard, honest work fails to accomplish much. This slowly leads her to turn a blind eye to Jimmy's actions, and eventually leads her to participate in them willingly.
• Costume Evolution: She goes from stable blue or black clothes as a Consistent Clothing Style through seasons 1-5, to when she’s not in court at least, blouses that are far brighter with clashing colors, showing just how much she’s embraced the Saul persona.
• Covert Pervert: While it may not seem like it initially, she wants Jimmy as much as vice versa, a lot of the time making the first move.
• Crusading Lawyer: Acker wasn’t wrong when he said she wants to balance out the bad she does, but she also genuinely wants to work helping people, and not just get a bank more sites. After her Darkest Hour, she volunteers at legal aid and wants to get Jimmy out of prison early, while still being on the up and up.
• Culturally Religious: While not confirmed in the show, Vince Gilligan believes that she was raised Catholic, and exhibits a lot of the shame and self-punishment that he associates with that background.

D-F

• Daddy's Girl: Her dad was a Con Man in and out of her life, but "Ice Station Zebra" is her favorite movie because he loves it. Her relationship with him is still very tentative, and he was at best the kinder parent when her mother was emotionally abusive.
• Damsel out of Distress: Everyone near the end of season five assumes she'll be killed by Lalo or in some horrible danger. If anything, Jimmy is the fragile one who needs protecting, and she thinks she can keep the Lalo secret from him, being the one to get all the Villain Respect.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She may have had one when she lived in the Midwest, given how she stammers over her responses when Schweikert asks her about her personal background.
  • In "Alpine Shepherd Boy", one of the reasons why she wanted to be a lawyer was seeing her grandmother get taken advantage of by her shithead cousins. The writers confirmed she left Red Cloud not long after her grandmother's funeral.
  • In "The Guy For This" she tells an elderly man who is refusing to vacate his property — which Mesa Verde has purchased and intended to demolish — that during her childhood she often had to vacate the homes her family was renting at incredibly short notice due to her parents constantly defaulting on the rent. The man instantly dismisses her story as a pack of lies, however, leaving it ambiguous as to how truthful she's being.
  • In "Wexler V. Goodman" it is revealed that her mother was an alcoholic, who put Kim at risk by drunk-driving and expected her not to notice. As such, Kim hates not knowing something and thus this sets up her reaction to how Jimmy keeps her out of the loop during this episode. On this note, Kim has shown a tendency to drink heavily when she is stressed, which may well run in the family.
  • Further explored in "Axe and Grind" where Kim is caught shoplifting earrings and a necklace from a department store. Kim's mother puts on a show to the manager of disciplining her but reveals she was actually impressed Kim had it in her and secretly stole another set as a gift. Despite Kim looking troubled about it at the time, those earrings are the very ones Kim's seen wearing throughout the entire series, which implies she, in some way, treasures this moment. It planted the seeds for her complicated relationship with criminal activity as a means of connecting with loved ones.
  • Rhea Seehorn believes that because Kim is such a natural with the cons, even when she does feel guilt, she’s got to up some slipping shit in the past (which is implied when Kim says the “way she was going” she would have ended up a checkout girl), and that’s partly why she connects so well with Jimmy, almost taking it personally when someone disparages him, even if they’re right.
  • All There in the Manual eventually revealed that Kim’s father was a Con Man not always present in her life and gave her stolen gifts, while the rest of the town treated her family like crap as they were considered trailer trash. Growing anger about this made Kim shoplift more, pull her own cons and consider Howard a stand-in for all the rich people she hated.
• Death by Origin Story: Subverted, despite a few close calls in the series and her name being non-existent in Albuquerque by the time of Breaking Bad. Kim is the only main character original to Better Call Saul who survives the events of the series and her absence in Saul's life is revealed to be because she had divorced him and moved to Florida. Still, her leaving Jimmy in "Fun And Games" is what completes his transformation into the Saul Goodman of Breaking Bad.
• Debt Detester: Even though she hates how she's treated at HHM, and has vengeful little fantasies about Howard when stuck in doc review, she stays there for a while not just because of ambition but because they helped her with student loans, and she wants to repay them.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Morality Chain. She’s got her own shit going on, and her own attempts at trying to be good, and she really doesn’t want to be Jimmy’s as much as he puts her in that role.
• Defiant Captive: Her defiant attitude towards Lalo, calling him out for not having any trusted men in his operation, is what causes him to leave Jimmy and Kim's apartment after interrogating them at gunpoint.
  • Later deconstructed in "Point and Shoot". While she's very willing to shoot Gus after Lalo threatens her to, and even screams at Mike after he captures her for not being there to protect her and Jimmy, Kim's still terrified throughout the whole ordeal, and is left deeply traumatized. After the adrenaline's faded, she clamps up completely.
• Despair Event Horizon: She was already shaken by inadvertently causing Howard's murder at the hands of Lalo, but lying to Cheryl and gaslighting her about not noticing Howard's supposed coke addiction causes her to quit being a lawyer, break up with Jimmy, and leave for parts unknown. She feels that she and Jimmy are terrible for each other and only enable each other to be worse people, despite loving each other. As they have their divorce meeting and Jimmy shows he's fully dissociated into his Saul Goodman persona, she gets even lower, feeling like it's her fault and completely eradicates her own personality in Florida. They both get better.
• Desperately Craves Affection: The earrings and necklace her mother stole for her are her Iconic Item despite wanting to be punished, but she also doesn’t think she really deserves to be cared about, which is implied to be the reason why she stayed under-valued at HHM for so long.
• Desperately Seeking A Purpose In Life: She left her small town because the only option staying there was to be a checkout girl, and grows increasingly disillusioned with working for a bank and rich assholes.
• Deuteragonist: While not initially, just being intended for a moral center at first, from season two the show is just as much about dealing with her own dark side as it is about Jimmy’s and Mike’s.
• Dismissing a Compliment: Kim’s ego might be big, but her self-esteem isn’t great, and she’s actively uncomfortable when someone gives her praise.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Kim and Jimmy's plan, which she insists upon, involves subjecting Howard Hamlin to a Humiliation Conga that potentially permanently damages his reputation and career. Over the course of her and Jimmy's planning of D-Day, it becomes strongly hinted that she's doing this mostly out of spite for him, and not for the Sandpiper settlement or anything he's actually done wrong.
• Dominatrix: Portrayed less in a sexy whips and chains way, and more Kim topping Jimmy is how they both have fun; his enjoying letting her take the lead, and her getting to be herself around him unlike most of the men around her who have specific ideas on how she should be.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Her need to handle things by herself is at once a strength and a flaw. She can manage on her own even in dangerous situations most "civilians" would crumble under, and her independence got her out of her shitty hometown, but she’s deeply irritated even needing help when she has a cast on. This especially applies towards anyone who labels her "fallen" for associating with Jimmy.
• Do Wrong, Right:
  • She’s really good at the scams she and Jimmy pull together, and he checks with her approval more than once. When she’s comfortable enough, she affectionately pokes at him for not getting Sandpiper settled right.
  • In "Nailed", while not looking at him because she's compartmentalizing how to keep herself clean, she tells him he needs to cover up better because otherwise Chuck will end him.
• Drink-Based Characterisation: She loves Zafiro Añejo. The characterization is twofold: the bottle stop is important to her because it represents her rekindling her relationship with Jimmy, and she buys it to con Ken Wins, showing she’ll both go along with Jimmy’s schemes and escalate them when she likes.
• Drowning My Sorrows: She feels just as shitty about the fight with Jimmy as he does, and while he starts to move out due to feeling like he’s ruined everything, she’s drinking morosely from a beer bottle and staring into space.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: The men around her all seem to underestimate her, and the reason why she finally leaves HHM is because she was sent to the cornfield twice for what wasn't her fault. She also starts to resent the Kettlemans because they assume winning means getting off scot-free, when she's worked her ass off getting them a plea deal.
• Dumb Blonde: She's definitely not; smart as hell and knows it, but she plays up the fact that she's pretty and blonde and men don't take her seriously anyway when she needs something.
• The Dutiful Son: Up until her grandma died and she left, never wanting to talk about any of it, she was more the actual parent than her mother was, and one of the reasons why she started conning was because the richer people of Red Cloud treated her family like trash.
• Early Personality Signs: She wanted to be Atticus Finch when she was younger (and very poor, with an Alcoholic Parent), foreshadowing her own Loss of Identity when she’s under stress.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Bittersweet, she’s still got a lawsuit hanging over her head after all, but after a whole life of repression and pulling herself in different directions, and both blowing up her career because scams make her happy, or punishing herself after the Lalo Lie by not being able to have opinions about ice-cream, she’s made peace with her emotions and is more honest, she's back with Jimmy (despite how they'll have to work around with him being in jail), volunteers at legal aid, and is able to have fun without actually hurting anyone.
• Emotion Suppression: Kim really feels the need to control her emotions, seeing them as weak or making her look like an idiot, and her big despairing cry in “Waterworks” is her whole life just bubbling up for full-blown weeping.
• Empty Shell: At the end of "Fun and Games", she has become a shell of a person, a nameless, faceless person on the street who wasted her potential.
• Endearingly Dorky: When she actually lets loose, as she has a Squee over being able to charm Mesa Verde into staying with her, gets really invested in hot men trapped in the snow movies, and while it takes her a bit of prodding for her to do a Brief Accent Imitation of her boss, she gets into it, pointer finger and all.
• Entitled to Have You: Played extremely sympathetically, as the Insider Podcast discussed how any time Jimmy felt like he should break up with her, she pulled him back with a bigger scam (her own insecurities thinking that's all he liked her for), and this is partly why she didn't tell him about Lalo's survival, because the scam would end, he'd try and protect her and then he might leave. The results from that leave her a guilt-ridden mess.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Much like Jimmy with her. Part of her motivation to ruin Howard is because she thinks it’s a fun scam, and her husband has PTSD, so why shouldn’t she get him back to his old self with some schemes he loves, and encourage his Saul persona?
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • By the time of 'Plan and Execution', Jimmy and Kim are both firmly Villain Protagonists who have no problem with gleefully destroying Howard's life (though it’s hinted by their reactions to Howard's speech that they’re beginning to regret taking things quite so far). Despite this, Kim still pleads for Howard to leave and save his life when Lalo shows up and are horrified when Lalo blows his brains out.
  • She really hates Chuck, and very willingly took part, sometimes even the lead, in scams to discredit him, but feels more guilt upfront about both his mental illness and suicide.
  • Gaslighting Howard's grieving wife about the nature of his death is the catalyst for Kim's Heel Realization, and what ultimately leads to her abandoning Jimmy and Albuquerque.
• Everyone Has Standards: As much as she likes her Power Dynamics Kink with Jimmy, she doesn't want him to feed her when her arm is in a cast. On a more serious note, she's for the most part uneasy with how many times he asks her what he should do, wanting him to have agency for himself and not just constantly twisting to make her or Chuck happy.
• Evil Feels Good: After some initial hesitation, she eagerly jumps into Jimmy's impromptu scam on Ken Wins, then is giddy enough afterward to sleep with him. Though the next day she comes to her senses and doesn't respond to Jimmy's attempt to make her his new partner in crime. Every subsequent scam, though, gives her a bigger and bigger high. When with Jimmy, Kim feels inspired to go for the jugular during their scams, a trait she grows aware and terrified of to the point that her lie to Howard's wife-turned-widow while covering up her role in his death is the breaking point for her relationship with Jimmy.
• Evil Is Petty: Becomes very petty in "Something Unforgivable", when she decides that Howard's insinuation that she quit Mesa Verde and S&C because of Jimmy's influence offends her so much that she's willing to ruin the man's career over it.
• Exact Words: Kim is very careful to never speak aloud her suspicion that Jimmy altered the Mesa Verde documents, as knowing and not acting would get her disbarred. She does, however, tell him to ensure that "his I's are dotted and his T's are crossed" to warn him that Chuck will be investigating how Jimmy forged the documents. She also confesses to Paige and Kevin that Jimmy is suspected of forgery that caused their project to be withheld and drew them to her but she never says she knows that it's true.
• Expository Hairstyle Change:
  • After divorcing Jimmy, and only getting to see Saul Goodman when she actually wanted a goodbye, she changes her hair to brown, wanting to blend into the crowd.
  • At the end of “Saul Gone”, she changes her hair a second time, still brown but shorter with a curl. She’s still heavily affected by what’s happened, and can’t go back to who she was, but she has more peace with herself, is back with Jimmy (with an innocent scam of pretending to be his lawyer) and working in law again.
• Extreme Doormat: Post time-skip in Florida, she makes herself as small and as agreeable as possible, with none of her fire or will to get more for herself remaining. Trauma from her life in Albuquerque leave her doubting her every decision and its potential fall-out, rendering her paralyzed even over relatively minor choices.
• Face Framed in Shadow: Before her Establishing Character Moment, she's outside with her body in the light but face in shadow, which ended up showing off her conflict between her dark side and trying to be good quite well.
• Face–Heel Turn: As of "Something Unforgivable", Kim has officially graduated from harmless scams done just for fun to pushing for a scheme that may completely ruin Howard Hamlin so she and Jimmy can get the Sandpiper Crossing money as soon as possible. Even Jimmy seems taken aback.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Her pathologically independent streak along with her self-righteous and controlling reasoning that she can think her way out of anything is great when she’s a lawyer, not so much when she’s far too good at scamming; compartmentalizing that nothing has any consequence and it’s not her fault.
  • That independent streak and refusal to let anyone "save" her can cross over into stubbornness:She refuses to tell Jimmy that Lalo is still alive because she worries that he'll try and "save" her from him. Lalo goes on to return to their apartment and murder Howard in front of them. If Jimmy had known he could prevent Howard's death, the end of Kim's legal career, and the breakup of their relationship, even if he had simply known to lock the door.
  • Shared with Jimmy, but she would rather die than share her own feelings in a normal sitting down and talking kind of way. She goes coldly practical and throws herself into work, takes his shutting down as a get out of jail free card to shut down too, and they're unfortunately both hugely insecure about the other one leaving as soon as they get the chance, so if there's a lull she'll propose a scam. Which... brings us onto Howard.
• Fate Worse than Death: Kim lost all trust in her decision-making after her role in Howard's murder to the point she shuts down her old life and moves to Florida. By Gene's timeline, she's stripped herself of her previous assertiveness and decisiveness, shown to waffle on picking ice cream flavors and otherwise positioned herself to live a flavorless boring existence where what few decisions she does make never risk harming someone. She's miserable, having given up on anything that made her happy and believing she was never worth anything more than “a cashier at Hinky Dinky”.
• Foil:
  • To Howard Hamlin. Howard is heavily implied to have only gained his name on HHM through nepotism, the other "H" in the firm belonging to his late father. He admits to feeling unable to escape the pressure and expectations from both his family name as well as his mentor (and third name in the firm) Chuck McGill. Meanwhile, Kim grew up with an absent father and a rocky relationship with her mother to the point that the only personal item from her childhood the audience is aware she owns is a pair of earrings she stole with the (failed) intention of angering her mother. Kim was hired as a partner at Schweikart & Cokely after working her way up through the mailroom and doc review at HHM (more than once) with every sign pointing to her wanting nothing to do with her past life and few, if any, of her colleagues being aware of it. Howard's skills as a lawyer are up for debate, with Jimmy claiming he's "a shitty lawyer, but a terrific salesman," and if nothing else IS shown to be skilled at winning over clients and soothing tensions during the Sandpiper case. Kim proves charming and formidable in her own right, from gaining Mesa Verde as a client after countless hours pulling every connection she had to successfully convincing Lalo, a high-ranking cartel boss, to fix his own messy operation instead of interrogating Jimmy at their home and while both were at gunpoint. However, she's just as capable in the courtroom, managing to turn the tables on both Howard and Chuck during Jimmy's bar hearing to the point of staining Chuck's image for life. Although Howard acts borderline robotic at times when talking with clients and coworkers, he genuinely wants to improve himself and make amends for his past misdeeds after being called out on them. While at first glance Kim appears the more personable and genuine of the pair, she is more than willing to adopt fake personas for her schemes to succeed and refuses to ever admit fault even when called out on her obsessive takedown of Howard's career by the man himself.
  • To Chuck. Both are living emotional crutches to Jimmy who need him just as much as he needs them but push him away out of self-loathing. They encourage Jimmy to embrace Saul Goodman - Kim because she's turned on by it and wants Jimmy to be happy, Chuck because he assumes his brother will never be anything more than a conman. Finally, each disappearing from Jimmy's life is a critical step towards Jimmy becoming Saul Goodman: Chuck's death marks the point where Jimmy starts working with and building connections to Albuquerque's criminal elements, while Kim leaving broke Jimmy's last connection whom he had any reason to be a better man for, casting himself into the persona for good so he never has to confront his emotions.
  • To Jimmy himself. They share a lot of the same problems, an eagerness to cut corners, a love of conning, she responds to his Condescending Compassion that he's bad for her and they should break up with bigger scams and he has Entitled to Have You traits, they're both an Insecure Love Interest, both have an aversion to real therapy though really need it, she got emotionally abused by her mother and sees the same dynamic with him and Chuck, their first instinct is Never My Fault except when it comes to each other, but the difference is, she responds to repeated trauma by being a Martyr Without a Cause, who over-corrects and deprives herself of joy but can at least face reality and responsibility, while he just hides under the Saul/Gene safety blanket. At the end, they're both able to be at peace with themselves, happy to be in a relationship where they can just exist near each other and smoke a cigarette for as long as they can.
• Forceful Kiss: He of course enjoys it too, but she's very fond of grabbing Jimmy when she kisses him. When it's their onscreen Last Kiss, and she knows it, she's a lot softer.
• Forbidden Fruit: In the beginning of the series, she’s trying very hard to straighten up and fly right (because as she’s said, if she continued on the path she was on she’d have ended up a check-out girl in her tiny hometown), but remaining issues from her mother - wanting her punishment and her affection all at once - and the thrill of cons gradually bring her down.
• For Great Justice: She admits to having had a small crush on Atticus Finch, but mostly just wanted to be him.
• For Your Own Good: Kim has something of a superiority complex and thinks she knows what other people deserve, whether it’s Howard “deserving” to be taken down, or it’s breaking up with Jimmy both because they’re bad for each other, but also feels like she’s protecting him by not having to absolve her of anything anymore, when she really wants to be punished.
• Friendless Background: Kim has strategic friends, can put on a likeable face, but is a loner beyond having a few bar buddies.
• Freudian Excuse: Her mother was an immature Alcoholic Parent who would fake being decent in front of other authority figures, which forced Kim to be self-reliant, installed in her a need to do more (whether it acts like Atticus Finch, or partake in cons that she’s good at), and made her able to push to see how far she could go, back then in hopes of being punished, later because of Desperately Seeking A Purpose In Life.
• Functional Addict: She drinks a lot, but unlike her mother, she's never buzzed unless Playing Drunk to lure in a mark and very likely has built up a high tolerance for it.

G-L

• Gaslighting: She does it effortlessly, playing up that she’s upset in public when Rich spots the thread about the Acker case, telling Kevin he ignored legal advice with said case when she’d been sabotaging the whole time, and is delighted about Howard losing his marbles. It’s when she does it to Cheryl Hamlin, using the knowledge of the failing marriage, to seed doubts in her mind that her dead husband really was taking drugs, that she realizes she’s too good at this, has too much fun doing it, and implodes in self-hatred.
• Goal in Life: All she could really give as an answer to why she left Red Cloud is because she wanted "more". It wouldn't be unfair to say she didn't really know what that was, conning only making her happy up to a point (whatever her standard is that day) and she'd sabotage an opportunity for full-time pro-bono work. Gould was saying Kim mostly wants some significance and meaning in her life.
• Glory Days: She tells Jimmy she had the time of her life with him, implying that she’s never going to have fun (or be able to be herself) like that again and probably won’t even try.
• Go-to Alias: "Giselle St Clair". She also tended to favour the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, letting herself get condescended to by Chuck only to reveal it was part of the plan, and pretending to be a harried single mother to get more space for Mesa Verde.
• Grammar Nazi: After what happens with Chuck and the address swap, while she is ultimately okay with it, she makes more work for herself by combing over her Mesa Verde writing for any possible mistake.
• Guile Hero: Probably Kim’s defining moment of guile is when she managed to get the respect of a head Cartel member (and Mike) by telling him where to go.
• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: She tries to maintain Plausible Deniability about the Mesa Verde forgery but she quickly realizes that Jimmy is guilty. Nevertheless, she protects him because she needs the income Mesa Verde brings her law practice and she wants to get back at Chuck and Howard for their mistreatment of her and Jimmy. However, she starts feeling guilty about what is happening to Chuck as a result, though this stops when Howard actually calls her out on it.
  • Inverted by Season 6 where Jimmy expresses more hesitancy and guilt for their scheme against Howard, with Kim taking the wheel through most of it.
  • Inverted once again after Lalo's home invasion where Jimmy, on the outside at least, is able to adjust better while Kim is left such a guilt-ridden mess that she no longer feels worthy of being an attorney.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's blonde and is one of the nicest characters, even though this slowly gets subverted as the series goes on.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: She’s forced to learn this more than once, and Shock and Awe doesn’t really work for her either, so she settles for controlling some strings behind the curtain, and she’s very good at that.
• Hates Being Touched: Downplayed in that when she's making the first move, she's grabby and feely, but when Jimmy makes the first move, he's always slower and more deliberate. Occasionally she still flinches before realizing who it is and easing in.
• Hates Their Parent: She has a lot of anger over her mother, who acted like an overgrown child but a decent parent in public.
• Heel Realization: Quits her law practice and leaves Jimmy mid-way through Season 6 upon realizing that she was having so much fun running scams alongside him that it indirectly led to Howard's murder since she feared that telling Jimmy that Lalo was still alive would mean he'd call off their plan.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: One scene after she calls him up for a movie and dinner date, she denies to Howard that she and Jimmy are close. According to the commentary, it's a lot to do with her trying to get ahead in her career.
• Her Boyfriend's Jacket: Doubling as Tragic Keepsake, "Fun and Games" has her breaking up with Jimmy while wearing the grey hoodie he wore in "50% Off" and "Coushatta" (when he was enacting her scam no less).
• Hello, Attorney!: She's very attractive, as is appreciated by Jimmy.
• Heroic BSoD: Completely clamps up after Howard's murder, and realising how cruel she can be (in gaslighting Cheryl) when she doesn’t have to, she has a breakdown and leaves her whole life behind. It’s played as both the only hail mary she could think of, and her conscience coming back after being beaten down.
• Heroic RRoD: In Season 3, she stretches herself extremely thin—between being on retainer for Mesa Verde, picking up the slack from Jimmy's practice, defending Jimmy in the State Bar hearing and taking on a new major client, she is pulling all-nighters on a regular basis. This comes to bite her in the ass when her fatigue causes her to run off the side of the freeway, very nearly killing her.
• Her Own Worst Enemy:
  • Rhea Seehorn knew Kim was a child of an Alcoholic Parent from day one, and Kim is a smart, well-respected, capable woman... who drinks too much, shows Undying Loyalty to a man who is just as bad about self-sabotage, and destroys her chance for a decent career by turning back around because she wants to destroy Howard's reputation that badly.
  • While she had a genuine Heel Realisation about how much she's corrupted the law, and she's right about how poisonous to anyone else her relationship with Jimmy is, leaving ABQ, the law profession and her husband is as much she feels like she doesn't deserve any kind of happiness. Rhea Seehorn called her an Empty Shell at this point.
• High-School Hustler: She did cons in her teens as she figured that was the only way to get ahead in her shitty town, but eventually figured she'd end up a miserable cashier so fled and straightened up her act.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Played with. "American Greed" depicts her as a bright young lawyer who was simply corrupted by "Saul Goodman". All her flaws are taken out, but Kim's main source of anger are people treating her like she's some lovesick teenager too good for someone she considers the only person in the world who knows her.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: Her positive Character Development after the Lalo lie, as she cares less about the crimes Jimmy has committed as Saul, and more that he’s leading a pathetic existence trying to pretend he didn’t do anything wrong and that he's not still terrified of the cartel coming to kill him. After his actual confession (and she sneaks in as his lawyer, fun little lies are still okay), their romance is rekindled, in whatever weird form it takes now.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Goes from the head attorney for Mesa Verde as well as one of the high-ranking lawyers for Schweikart and Co., as well as being reputed as one of the most promising and smartest lawyers in the country to a wreck once Lalo kills Howard due to her and Jimmy's scam and attempts to force her into killing Gus, to leaving her law practice and disappearing, in order to stop harming people, and her legacy barely mentioned in the sequel series. Admittedly, it's a self-imposing example.
• Hypocrite: Reveals the Awful Truth to try and make the break up easier. As much as she'd loathed Jimmy's lies and overprotective behavior before, she lied about Lalo still being alive both to protect him and because she knew he would respond by calling off the Howard scam and even ending their relationship when she was having the time of her life with both.
• I Am Not My Mother: A lot of Kim's issues stem from how she tries to run so far from becoming her mother, but in doing so, repeats the same patterns anyway. Beyond cons and hurting people, she drinks, she doesn't want to deal with emotions, and she crashes a car not out of drunk driving but trying to work on too little sleep.
• I Can Change My Beloved: She goes from being uneasy about Saul to treating her husband as a dress-up doll to build up the Saul persona. In a difference to the normal trope, Kim loves Jimmy as he is, they're doing this as a kink, and while it has bad consequences (he falls into the persona because he thinks she likes Saul more, and she has intense guilt over "ruining" him), they both have fun at the time.
• Icarus Allusion: Kim sees herself as Icarus, who dared to have some ambition in wanting to leave her hometown, and now makes herself as meek as possible.
• Iconic Item: Her triangle earrings. They represent the start of her conning past, wanting another chance at childhood and her complicated feelings towards both that and her mother, wanting her affection and her punishment at the same time.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: In Florida. As she thinks having any actual fun would inevitably end in sadism and she's helpless to that urge, she settles for all blue jigsaw puzzles. Seehorn has joked that meant Kim had completely lost it, and a few more of those would have ended up in a murder spree.
• Improperly Paranoid: Zig-zagged. One of the reasons why she tells Jimmy to turn himself in is because she has a fear that the cartel will come and shoot him (as well as she sees through his pitiful self delusion and knows the guilt is killing him). She doesn't know that the cartel are all gone, but Jimmy has always had a knack for getting into trouble, and goes on a suicidal relapse right after the call.
• Inelegant Blubbering: After telling Cheryl what really happened in “Waterworks”, and neither of them getting any catharsis, as well as according to word of god, her childhood and guilt over her relationship and where they’ve both ended up, she breaks down in agonised tears on the bus. It’s also said that it’s her first breakdown in her life, not just a minute of wobbling shoved down by a cigarette.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Kim’s god complex goes hand and hand with how angry she is at herself. It’s very hard for her to loosen up, and she doesn’t want to even think about her existence before Albuquerque (she had a Con Woman past before trying to be as good as possible with law school and HHM), but she also thinks she alone knows what everyone else needs.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • Her attempt to comfort Cheryl saying that Howard "didn't suffer" in his death due to a gunshot to the head is met with met with Cheryl angrily mocking her statement, pointing out that he suffered from Kim's and Jimmy's harassment of him and harming his reputation so badly that their false narrative is the only thing most people remember about Howard six years on.
  • While she knows more than she lets on to Chuck about Jimmy's daddy issues, she doesn't know that Jimmy saw his parents fail in marriage after the shop failed (so thinks he needs an office to keep a relationship going), and doesn't understand why that's his only proof of love.
• Insecure Love Interest: She's just as insecure in the relationship as Jimmy is, even if she doesn't show it as much. As well as loving Jimmy, she also loves how much he loves her, but she never really knows quite how to handle the emotional depth of it. So when she feels like she doesn’t deserve it anymore, off she goes. The “Waterworks” Insider Podcast also confirmed that she suggested bigger scams because she was scared he might actually leave, when from the way he’s always acted around her, he’d do anything but, even if they weren’t conning together.
• It's All My Fault: Despite still managing to compartmentalise with “Howard didn’t suffer”, she’s destroyed herself with guilt over wanting fun with the Howard scam, everything that happened there, knowing about Lalo and thinking she’s to blame for Jimmy turning into Saul.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: In-universe. Rhea Seehorn described her as "anti-hip", and she's obsessed with old and obscure movies (especially where hot men are trapped in small spaces), far less interested in anything popular.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Fashionable: From all the way back in season two, Kim encourages the "colorful" clothes her boyfriend likes so much.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In “Fun and Games”, she’s such a Broken Bird she feels like she doesn’t deserve anything she has, not even Jimmy’s love (also knowing he’d just focus on absolving her), and leaves him, making him Saul Goodman full time.
• I Will Wait for You: While also visiting (with plenty of conjugal visits) and working to get him out early, both Bob and Rhea agree that when Jimmy gets out of jail, she'll be right there and they'll live together again.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Her yelling at Howard in "Breathe" is unfair Misplaced Retribution that should have been reserved for Chuck himself, but she's not wrong in that Rebecca gets to live happily Locked Out of the Loop and Jimmy (as closed off and dissociated as he is, it's still getting to him) gets a mini Trauma Conga Line on top of his brother's death.
  • "Jimmy you are always down" might be nasty, but she's completely right. He might get it from Chuck who acted like his brother couldn't help fucking up everything he touches, but Jimmy will act like he has no agency in anything and is just doomed so he doesn't have to process what's happened to him or how many opportunities he's wasted.
• Jerkass to One: Kim is this to Howard due to his transgressions against her. It gets even worse by Seasons 5 and 6. Howard did have a habit to send her to review or farther in the building than from her comfort as punishments, but some of his punishments were about how she coaxed him into giving Jimmy a chance when Howard really hates that because it tends to backfire on him. It still lead to Kim being quicker to lash on Howard than on anyone else that act condescending or badly around her.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Even at her worst, most petulantly sadistic, and her tendency to have different standards depending on whatever she’s feeling that day, Kim is unfailingly loyal, just wants her One True Love to not be in pain, really wants to do good not just to outweigh the bad, and her conscience never really disappears despite being buried occasionally.
• Jumped at the Call: She eventually has to admit she was like this with the scams, wanting a distraction from the jobs she wasn't happy in, the (unfounded) fear that her relationship needed them to survive, and trauma she's run away from.
• Just Like Robin Hood: Kim fancies herself as this, anyway. She justifies her later schemes as either being necessary to help the less fortunate or the rewards from those schemes helping build her pro-bono law firm towards those same ends. Even as it becomes increasingly clear she's motivated as much, if not more, by contempt for privileged authority figures, to the point she'll with little hesitation turn away from a golden opportunity to jumpstart a legitimate pro-bono practice in favor of screwing over Howard.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Apart of becoming an emotionally and mentally broken shell of her former self, she has avoided for years the repercusions of scamming Howard, a situation that radically changes due to her affidavit where she confesses everything. While legal punishment is not possible due to lack of material evidence and Jimmy not testifying against her, Cheryl will likely sue her for everything she has, threatening her already modest lifestyle. Nevertheless, the admission of guilt and the prospect of an incoming punishment improves her for the better.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Following through on her plan to screw over Howard in Season 6.
  • She gaslights Howard’s widow with a story about how Kim saw him doing drugs, and uses what she knows about their failing marriage to put doubts in Sheryl’s mind about whether he really was an addict or not. It’s a wake-up call on how casually cruel she can be because she really didn’t need to do that at all, and when Jimmy just enables her, it makes her implode.
• Lady Macbeth: By season six, she treats the Saul Goodman persona like a dress-up doll, encouraging a lot of what he'd become later known for, the flamboyant suits and car as well as the "I'll fight for you" Catchphrase, and the more scams they do, the more she gets off on it, acting like being a friend to the cartel is preferable to being a rat.
• Last Kiss: In the episode "Fun and Games" Kim and Jimmy leave Howard's wake memorial and share a kiss at the spot in the parking garage where they used to go for a shared cigarette. The kiss is passionate but also seems ominously like their last, and comes before they drive home in their separate cars. Later in the episode Kim does indeed tell Jimmy that she is leaving him.
• A Lesson Learned Too Well:
  • Her Dark and Troubled Past and having to be the grown up while her mother pissed around made her refuse to be saved, as she saves herself. This ends up having bad effects when she doesn't want to face reality, and will keep secrets because she wants that badly to not be protected. When it comes to Florida, saving herself becomes essentially making her own noose.
  • After keeping Lalo's survival a secret leads to Howard's death, she doesn't want to hurt anyone ever again. Except she can't make any kind of choice, she does no good either and it takes her a long time to deem herself worthy of having any kind of fun or joy or love in her life. She's not actually helplessly sadistic whenever she wants to have a good time like she thought.
• Lethal Chef: She’s not comfortable with cooking at all, and she asks “do you want me to try an omelette” like it’s a bad idea. So her self-imposed life in Florida where she’s expected to Stay in the Kitchen is painful.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: Like Kim herself is a version of Chuck without the cruelty, Jimmy is a far more loving version of Kim's mother, similarities including acting emotionally stunted, letting her down at a crucial moment (Mrs Wexler admitting she's proud of her daughter stealing, Jimmy admitting he faked it at his reinstatement hearing), Kim eventually following both her mother in alcoholism and him in finding Saul a comfort, and oblivious to the harm they've caused unless called out.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Jimmy. The only reason why she’s slightly better than he is with her is that she’s at least aware of other people, but she still asks early on that she just wants him to be happy and doesn’t understand how that can be bad, and the reason she didn’t tell him about Lalo is that she was having too fun and feared they’d break up, which ended as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy with Howard dead, the relationship over and the two of them irreparably traumatized.
• Living Lie Detector: Knows Jimmy well enough to see through his bullshit (most of the time), but rather than innate ability, it is a skill she learns over their time together.
• Loss of Identity:
  • With it already been established that Jimmy would rather be Saul Goodman than “Jimmy McGill, Chuck’s loser brother”, season five and six has Kim do the same, slowly coming around to the short-term joys of that persona (and eventually encouraging Jimmy to cement most of who he’ll be in the next series) because she’s imploding as herself.
  • While she still keeps her name in Florida, it's still played as That Woman Is Dead, changing her hair, clothes and becoming a Shrinking Violet Extreme Doormat. After a hugely despairing sobbing fit on a bus, she starts to get some strength back, leaving the bad parts of herself behind.
• The Lost Lenore: Partly self-imposed as she feels like they’re poison but also she doesn’t deserve any love, but Jimmy. She knows full well that Saul and Gene are just shadows of the husband she feels like she ruined, looking at Saul in quiet horror and essentially telling Jesse the good man she knew is gone.
• Love Epiphany: The commentary for “Switch” confirmed that the post-scam kiss (which was improvised by Rhea Seehorn) was when Kim realized she was in love with Jimmy right back.
• Loved by All: At the start. She's got high connections with police and other lawyers, Howard sees her as a favourite daughter, Chuck sees her a protégé, and obviously Jimmy worships her. It also shows the downsides, as nobody really knows her and she feels like she has to be perfect.

M-P

• Manipulative Bitch: She starts out doing it for the greater good, but her reasons get steadily more tenuous as the series goes on. By the time she gaslights Howard Hamlin’s widow into believing he really did take drugs, she has a Heel Realisation and wants to vanish off the face of the earth.
• Married to the Job: When she's struggling and particularly can't deal with having a sincere conversation, she escapes into her work and takes on more than any one person could really stand. Early season three shows her sleeping with a Mesa Verde file.
• Martyr Without a Cause: The Insider Podcast openly said that with the guilt alone over Lalo and keeping it from Jimmy and seeing him as Saul making her think she may as well have killed him herself, on top of everything else, makes her think that death would be too easy for her and she has to keep living. She always had minor cases of this where she would overcorrect herself or take thankless pro bono cases after the feud with Chuck went too far as a way of penance.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy:
  • Her dynamic with Jimmy, as she tries to be logical and controlled, she’s less concerned with her appearance (one of her ethics training videos has “strategic partnerships”, with her as the brains and his suits as a shiny distraction), implied to not be a good cook, plays golf and promises to teach him how one day, and she’s the one who proposes after a while of not getting his need for an office and house with her.
  • This dynamic, and the occasionally kinky fun they had with it, shadows her life in Florida, as she's expected to cook and wash up, and stay with the women at the barbecue.
• Meaningful Rename: While forcing her to (be a distraction) go shoot Gus while he holds her husband hostage, Lalo calls her “Mrs. Goodman”. For as fun Saul is to her, that’s now stopped being a comfort, and by the end of “Fun and Games”, she’s just broken.
• Mirror Character: By the end of the first half of Season 6, it becomes clearer and clearer that she has more in common with Walter White than Jimmy does:
  • Both Kim and Walt start off their character arcs as amiable enough people with respectable careers (Walt as a teacher, Kim as a lawyer), but slowly begin to "break bad" over the course of the series. Initially, they commit low-level crimes (Walt cooking small amount of meth, Kim and Jimmy pulling small-time scams), but they soon begin to dip their toes closer into criminal activity (Walt getting involved with Gus, Kim getting involved with Jimmy and Lalo), until they reach a point where they are unrecognizable from who they used to be (Walt being a drug kingpin who had ten people murdered in prison, Kim ruining Howard's life and career out of sheer pettiness). Finally, their higher-level crimes result in fatal consequences (Walt inadvertently getting Hank killed by Jack Welker, Kim inadvertently getting Howard killed by Lalo).
  • Their background, character, and motivation also seem similar. They both come from middle-class families, have experienced financial hardships and had poor relationships with their mothers. Their Berserk Button is being patronized, belittled or underestimated, especially by people who are more powerful, privileged, or wealthy than them. Finally, despite their outward display of altruistic reasons for their behavior (providing for his family after his death for Walt, giving to the less well-off access to first-rate legal advice for Kim), they are both actually driven by repressed frustration and rancor.
  • Both of them eventually grow to enjoy their criminal acts and refuse any offer to leave their criminal lives (Walt rejecting a 5 million-dollar bailout just so that he can keep on cooking meth, and Kim rejecting Clifford Main's offer to join a legitimate pro-bono organization to help people if it meant prejudicing her plan to ruin Howard).
  • It's even reflected in how both Walt and Kim are called by Hank and Howard respectively before they die as some of the smartest people they knew.
  • "Point and Shoot" has her attempt to shoot Gus as Walt did in "38 Snub", and in "Fun and Games", she tries to get Jimmy to hate her by telling him she knew about Lalo and didn't tell him because she didn't want to ruin her fun, just like when Walter finally tells Jesse about Jane.
  • However, there is one huge difference: as soon as Kim realizes how random violence is inextricably a part of a life of crime and the pain and sufferings that her schemes cause to their victims, she immediately leaves that life behind, even waiving her law license and giving up the proceeds of her last scam, making her post-"Fun and Games" self more like Jesse, tortured by everything, self-flagellating and seeking a punishment that will never come.
  • She is a far better person than Lalo, but he's not entirely wrong to see himself in her, as they can both be extremely charming when they want something and know the other finds them hot (her as Giselle, and him in Germany), they both know they're the smartest in the room and they're both loners who have Undying Loyalty to exactly one person.
  • Beyond Jimmy worshiping them both and the absence of them makes him check out completely to be Saul, there are a lot of similarities with her and Chuck. Both are brilliant lawyers (fantastic scam artists too) and know full well they're intelligent, both have some form of Black-and-White Insanity but also think they can put their fingers on the scales to decide who deserves punishment or not, and if they're filled with self-loathing then they will isolate themselves and push loved ones away. Kim isn't as rigid as Chuck is though, a much kinder person, and she's not so proud and self-serving that she'll treat others like slave dogs. She also actually quits the law out of self-hate, while Chuck just pretended to.
• Motive Decay: Kim's attitude towards scheming and scamming loosens up over time. While at first, she's up for some fun if it's against upper-class assholes who deserve it, Kim otherwise plays her professional lawyer life straight as an arrow and disapproves when Jimmy pulls Pryce out of hot water by forging evidence. Growing disillusionment with professional law culture and exposure to Albuquerque's seedier elements help Kim feel more comfortable pulling schemes and lying to clients if the end results will ultimately benefit them. Once Kim tires of helping the wealthy grow wealthier and learns Mesa Verde's latest expansion will displace an old man who's lived there for decades, she begins plotting against Mesa Verde so he won't have to relocate. Kim ultimately drops Mesa Verde as a client for full-time pro-bono work, right as she decides to ruin Howard's career through a complicated weeks-long scheme which even gives Jimmy pause. She even claims to have not told Jimmy Lalo was still alive because doing so would have meant calling off their Howard scheme. Realizing this is what pulls Kim out of her moral decline, at the cost of her relationships with Jimmy, her law career, and Albuquerque as a whole.
• The Movie Buff: Loves to watch old movies with Jimmy and decorates her flat with old movie posters. When Jimmy first suggests they buy a house together he attempts to win her over by suggesting they install a home cinema. She also eagerly loads up on rentals after being in a car accident and forced to rest and confesses that she wanted to become a lawyer after seeing Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird.
• Morality Chain: By Season 2 she's the only person whose approval Jimmy takes seriously, causing him to back down from his usual antics and play things more by the book. Impressing Kim is the reason Jimmy wanted to become a lawyer in the first place. Kim is aware of and does not like Jimmy putting her on a pedestal like this. All the same, Kim's departure is what finally completes Jimmy's transformation into the Saul Goodman we know from Breaking Bad. Gene's conversation with Kim several years later enrages him so much he sheds all decency and commits some of his worst actions, while seeing her in trouble also provoked Jimmy to face himself and refuse a lighter sentence.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Invoked by Howard Hamlin when he confronts Kim and Jimmy after he's publicly humiliated, calling Kim worse than Jimmy; while it's in Jimmy's nature to pull scams, Kim threw away her morality and promising career to roll around in the mud with him. There's some truth to this: Kim proves capable of vicious ruthlessness during their schemes that troubles Jimmy and, after a lifetime of being simultaneously Beneath Notice and upheld as an innocent paragon in the lawyer community, she takes pride in it. At least until her actions have fatal consequences, as she then removes herself from making any choice, good or bad, while Jimmy gives up in a different way and becomes Saul. Mike and Lalo seems to believe that she is tougher than Jimmy when it comes to the crime life but it's partly their bias toward Jimmy.
• Mouth of Sauron: Acker sees her as the “big gun” for Mesa Verde, “with a ponytail”. As much of a dick as he is, he’s got a slight point.
• Must Make Amends: While going to see Cheryl was partly self-destruction, post-breakdown she does actually start working to be better as she volunteers at legal aid. Working to be better also involves being kinder to herself, as she lets herself have fun (actual fun, nothing that involves hurting people) and love again.
• My Beloved Smother: Her mother manages the hard task of both treating her like a stray dog, and acting like a jealous Insecure Love Interest all at once.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Everything she's been repressing and compartmentalising comes out as she cries hysterically on the bus in "Waterworks", about Howard's death and how she'll never get punished for it, about how she used to be a helpful lawyer and turned herself into an Extreme Doormat, and the guilt she feels in how Jimmy became Saul.
• Mysterious Past: She doesn't like talking about her history, and has no family or personal photos from before she moved to Albuquerque.
• Nature Versus Nurture: How much Kim has changed since the days of season one, and how much she's always had a dark side is constantly up for debate, with the final season showing it’s very much both.
• Never Be Hurt Again: Jimmy genuinely looks surprised when she reveals something bad about her past (in that instance her awful cousins), implying there's secrets she has about her pre-ABQ life that not even he knows and she wants to close herself off to feeling vulnerable about it.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: Even as Kim's morality takes a nosedive, this is one line she takes great effort to avoid crossing during her scams. The combination of having a hand in Howard's death, being willing to shoot a complete stranger if it would save Jimmy's life, and easily gaslighting Cheryl at her husband's memorial service destroys her emotionally in the end, running away from everything she’d ever loved, until the finale.
• Never My Fault:
  • When Howard is giving her "The Reason You Suck" Speech, she’s trying to ignore the accusations, as she’s compartmentalizing and thinking he should just suck it up. She soon does a 180 into My God, What Have I Done? after Lalo murders him.
  • Acker calls her out on thinking the good she does somehow outweighs anything bad, and Kim gets aggressive, yelling at him right back. She tries to make up for it because she clearly knows he has a point (as while she's a martyr with a guilt complex, she's less good with actual responsibility until her actual confession to Cheryl, preferring to sweep it under the rug and run), but that doesn't work either.
• Nerves of Steel:
  • She's clearly afraid in "Bagman", but goes to see Lalo in prison anyway because she needs information that badly. As well as thinking she's hot, he starts seeing her as a mirror to himself.
  • The woman managed to intimidate Lalo to get out of her house. It gains her Mike's respect, who goes from thinking she'll get scared and call the police to say she's made of sterner stuff than Jimmy.
  • While she’s utterly terrified and traumatized in “Point and Shoot”, crying because she thinks she’ll never see her husband again and freaking out at Mike, she’s willing to kill a man she had no idea existed before this, and decides against calling the police and gives Lalo a Death Glare on her way out, steeling herself because she needs Jimmy to be safe.
  • Not even she's sure that the cartel and Lalo are fully gone, but she still includes all she knows about them in her confession anyway.
• Nervous Tics: Bounces one foot up and down when nervous. A flashback in "Axe and Grind" shows that Kim has been doing this since at least her teen years.
• Nice Girl: Narky moments under stress aside, Kim starts off as a compassionate, hard-working lawyer, a loyal employee at HHM, and a good friend to Jimmy who genuinely cares about his life and stays at his side through thick (Chuck's hospital stay) and thin (scoping out Jimmy's potential office space). But as her relationship with Jimmy develops, her niceness erodes season by season to the point she laughs off Howard's (accurate) accusations of her plotting to ruin his career to his face, then gaslights his grieving wife after he's murdered to cover-up the fact she was there when it happened. The cruelty of this latter moment is enough to make her realize how far she's fallen. She then becomes one again in the finale, working at legal aid with abuse victims and learning how to have fun with loopholes again instead of showing her sadist side with the scams.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Helps Jimmy land a great job at Davis & Main, and even persuades Howard to put in a good word. Jimmy ends up pissing off his bosses post-haste, and Howard blames Kim for the backlash.
• The Nondescript: Makes a major effort to beome this in order to fit in in the Florida suburbs. She takes a Soul-Crushing Desk Job, adopts a casual and unglamorous look, and dates a Ridiculously Average Guy. Most telling is the way her day is filled with mundane conversation- we see that she is too afraid to even offer an opinion on ice cream.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Taking Gene's taunt to turn herself in as a self destruct challenge, she writes a confession about what really happened with Howard, and gives it to the DA along with Cheryl. It's seen as noble, but also... her old Never My Fault side peeks through when she says he didn't suffer, and she might not be prosecuted, and she breaks down sobbing on the bus, everything she's repressed just boiling up in her.
• Not So Above It All: While Kim is annoyed at fabricated evidence, Seehorn headcanoned that she took a few of the ass pies into HHM and gave them to staff she didn't like.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Despite generally being rather straight laced, she can't help giving a Big "YES!" and doing a little happy dance in "Rebecca" after finally landing some clients. Later on, when she retells how her important meeting went to Jimmy she goes full Motor Mouth on how she thinks things went well.
  • Even while she's trying to distance herself from Jimmy early on, she can't help but grin to herself after his publicity stunt scam, the first sign that she actively enjoys his scummier side.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Kim frames her plan to ruin Howard's career as being necessary to open her own pro-bono practice, as doing this would force the Sandpiper case to settle early and give Kim and Jimmy their millions. Later, however, Clifford Main presents Kim with a golden opportunity that would give her the resources she needs for full-time pro-bono work without any foul play. This meeting takes place the same day as the culmination of her scheme. When a last-minute obstacle to the plan arises and Jimmy tells Kim on her way to the meeting that they should call it off, however, Kim makes a U-turn so she can be there to right the ship, despite Jimmy later arguing it wasn't even necessary. At that point, it's clear she's following through with the scheme more out of spite against Howard than anything else.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: When she's playing "Giselle" with Dale in "Bali Ha'i", she lures him in with flirting and giggling while pulling a scam on him.
• Old Flame: She seems to have had a prior romantic relationship with Jimmy, and each scene with them smacks of untold history. In the Flashback at the beginning of "RICO," they excitedly kiss after receiving good news.
• Only Friend: Other than Chuck, who isn't as supportive as we're first led to believe, she's Jimmy's only clear friend in Albuquerque. Even after his confession tape tactical fuckup.
• On the Rebound: Her Florida boyfriend is portrayed as deeply boring with bad fashion sense, not that bright, is genial but doesn’t really value her opinions, and does nothing in sex, in contrast to Jimmy’s charm, flamboyance, worshipping love for her and Amazon Chaser side.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: She’s usually quiet, finding the power that way and letting people use their own rope to hang themselves with, and likes to keep her emotions/vulnerability in check, so when she gets angry or has a breakdown in public, she’s hit her Rage Breaking Point. Howard finds this out in early season four, and it only gets worse from there. She also has a massive breakdown in “Point and Shoot”, screaming at Mike when he stops her from killing Gus, and has a Tranquil Fury Thousand-Yard Stare at the end.
• Parental Neglect: Is implied to have been a victim of this, having had an unstable childhood being raised by an alcoholic mother.
• Parenting the Husband: Downplayed, as she wants Jimmy to not be in pain (like he did for his brother) and can often relate to his issues anyway, so that's a factor of her letting some of his bullshit slide, even when she makes it clear she's angry at him.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Blackmailing the Kettlemans in Season 6; they're pathetic crooks but even Jimmy is disturbed by it.
• The Perfectionist: It's mentioned she was taking ages in finding a paralegal, because she wanted to do it herself even with being swamped. There's also the fact that she hates herself, but also she strives so hard to be the best lawyer, the best scammer, and for a while, the best martyr until she learns to chill a little with the self-punishment.
• The Penance: Her "I’ll save me" attitude curdled into “I’m the one who condemns me”. The guilt over Howard is bad enough, breaking up with Jimmy and leaving her law career, but add in the blame she feels for Saul Goodman being in control instead of her now-ex husband, and his transparently flippant goodbye, and she greys herself out, not wanting to be looked at anymore, a boyfriend who is genial but doesn’t really care that much about her, and a job that’s like eternal doc review.
• The Perils of Being the Best: Her arc in season four, and to a lesser extent five. She's doing amazingly well professionally, but internally she's a mess and when her relationship has any lull that happens when you're both traumatized and long term anyway, she'd rather engineer a scam than really discuss anything openly. Then there's season six where she gets the Villain Respect she really doesn't want from Mike, Gus and Lalo.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Whenever she thinks Jimmy might be getting tired of her, she pulls him in for a bigger scam, as she's an Insecure Love Interest as well and can't actually talk to him about it.
• Plausible Deniability: Her relationship with Jimmy relies on this. As a lawyer, she is obligated to report to the bar association if she witnesses another lawyer behave unethically. However, as long as she does not personally see Jimmy do something unethical and Jimmy does not tell her about it, she is off the hook. If Jimmy is caught, she can legitimately claim that while she might have had suspicions, she never had any evidence to substantiate those suspicions.
• Poke the Poodle: Initially, at least, this is how she sees running cons with Jimmy; she'll help Jimmy trick someone into buying an expensive bottle of tequila, but she won't cash a $10,000 check acquired through grift. She wants out, however, when she realizes Jimmy can't stop breaking rules, but ultimately sticks by him despite her reservations. Then her Face–Heel Turn happens, and she graduates to a straight up fiendishly amoral lawyer that can be more outright vicious than Jimmy himself, as Howard points out.
• Positive Friend Influence: She usually works to set limits on Jimmy's schemes and, when things get really bad, to provide him with legitimate alternatives to his unethical and borderline illegal activities. That said, she still enjoys their small-time scams and has no intention of letting Jimmy go to jail or permanently lose his law license. She unwittingly strays away from this from Season 4 onwards, however, ever since helping him with his scam to keep Huell out of jail.
  • Come Season 6, she crosses over into Toxic Friend Influence instead. While Jimmy is initially onboard with her scheme to ruin Howard's reputation, she chooses to ignore an appointment that Cliff Main set up for her that would help her join an organization dedicated to helping people just so that she could personally be around to witness Howard's downfall. Not to mention not telling Jimmy that Lalo was still alive, leading to Lalo killing Howard after the latter visits Jimmy and Kim's house to tell them off for messing with him.
• Power Dynamics Kink: While equal in their actual partnership, sex-wise, Kim tops. After the scam in Coushatta goes off without a hitch, she slams her boyfriend into the wall (so hard the mirror behind him breaks) and kisses him, she gets off on “Saul Goodman” when she can help create him, and her acting like her boss bossing around Jimmy-as-Kim is a turn on enough for them both that they go take a shower as part of their roleplay. She does refuse to let him feed her though, saying there are some lines they don’t cross.
• Pragmatic Hero: What Rhea Seehorn describes her as. She's compassionate, struggles with guilt at first, and her Robin Hood deal isn’t faked, but she’s also a control freak with a god complex and Blue-and-Orange Morality, while also being very good at the scams.
• Pride: With "You don't save me. I save me" Kim sends Jimmy a stern reminder that she is no damsel in distress and she does not need rescuing- any trouble she is in, she will fix it without outside help. While this attitude seems admirable at first, in "Fun and Games" she admits to Jimmy that she knew Lalo was still alive but didn't tell him because she didn't want him to try and save her from harm while she was having fun scamming Howard. As a consequence Lalo murders Howard, which also puts an end to Kim's legal career and her relationship with Jimmy.
• Pride Before a Fall: Kim thinks that if she knows everything then she'll be able to control everything. When she's the one told about Lalo, she keeps it a secret because she thinks she can handle it alone. She can't.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Kim's journey in Better Call Saul parallels Jimmy's own, as she goes from joining in Jimmy's harmless scams for brief periods to covering up his forgery and other crimes, and eventually becomes ruthless enough to ruin Howard for a perceived slight.
• Psychological Projection: She's not entirely wrong, but she stays on Jimmy's side every time Chuck comes up, because the way Chuck treats his brother reminds her of the way her mother treated her.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: In response to everyone presuming to know her as Beneath Notice and The Corruptible, which is fair enough to get angry about, she takes it way too far, acts like a petty brat, forms her own persona that’s the worst version of herself and takes control of a plan to methodically destroy a man's career. The clusterfuck that happens after all this brings her back to earth with a crash, and makes her ruin her own life to make up for it.
• Psychotic Smirk: Gets a few of her own, especially when a plan to get back at Chuck is going perfectly, or when she's planning to destroy Howard’s life.
• Pyrrhic Victory: By Season 6B, she has everything she wanted: Howard's reputation ruined, Sandpiper case getting closed with her and Jimmy getting the money, an offer at a pro-bono organisation, and Lalo permanently out of her way. Too bad it also came with Howard's death, Lalo mentally and emotionally torturing both her and Jimmy with him forcing her to (attempt to) kill Gus, her compromising all of her ethics to make sure Howard is ruined as well as Kim gaslighting Cheryl so that she and Jimmy won't be suspected, which prevents her from enjoying any of her victories due to her immense guilt. Hours after everything is over, she divorces Jimmy and leaves her law career and everything in Alberqueque to get somewhere she can't harm anyone, leaving Jimmy (now as full-time Saul) to pick up the pieces.

R-Y

• The Quiet One: Unlike her husband who can motor mouth as a superpower, her talent is the opposite, watching and taking everything in, so that way she can try to control what happens next.
  Rhea: If you're that particular about what you say and when you speak, maybe you also don't like people to know your thoughts. Maybe you're economic with your gestures and your facial expressions. It just became this position of power for me, for the character, versus the position of weakness. I could just choose not to speak. She just observes these people until they hang themselves.
• Reassigned to Antarctica:
  • After the Kettlemans fire her, Howard moves her to an office on the other end of the building. Jimmy refers to this as "moving her to the cornfield" and Kim thinks that this will set her career back about eight years. Jimmy manages to save her by persuading the Kettlemans to rehire her.
  • She's sent back to "the cornfield" again after Jimmy runs his D&M ad without authorization. Even an attempt to save herself by bringing in the Mesa Verde case to HHM doesn't initially accomplish anything, and Chuck eventually has to intervene with Howard to restore her to her previous position. Despite this, Howard makes it as clear as he can without actually saying it that she has torched any real prospect of advancing beyond said position, let alone making partner status, ultimately resulting in her deciding to leave the firm.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: She's had her own Con Woman past, and did very well in going to law school and being a respected lawyer for HHM and S+C, but her own Allergic to Routine and desire to be Robin Hood got her in the game again. Howard being snotty with her, thinking it's Tough Love, also adds on.
• Reformed, but Rejected: She left Red Cloud to make something of her life after conning, but Howard makes the mistake of punishing her any time he thinks she's fucked up, and dashing her hopes for making partner in two years, so it makes her think that Hard Work Hardly Works. The Kettlemans being inhumanly irritating also don't help.
• Replacement Goldfish: Vehemently rejected, as while she does have a lot of similarities to Chuck, Jimmy assuming she will or even should treat him like Chuck did always has her reassure him that's not going to happen, and makes her hate Chuck more.
• Repression Never Ends Well: She left Red Cloud the moment she turned eighteen, and any memory from that time in her life has to be either used as a Wounded Gazelle Warcry or dragged out of her like getting blood out of a stone. It contributes to her slow breakdown later in life, her emotions boiling out of her more often, and she can only find some kind of catharsis after the first ever sobbing fit, allowing herself to start having some joy again and do actual good by working in legal aid.
• Sadist: Kim is implied to possess some sadistic traits in season six through her plans to spite Howard Hamlin. This is downplayed in that her and Jimmy's intentions were to subject Howard to a Humiliation Conga rather than to seriously hurt him, and her immediate concern for Howard's safety upon Lalo entering their apartment demonstrates this. That said, she seems to believe that the only way she can have fun is through hurting other people, so refuses to have any enjoyment at all for a while.
• Sanity Slippage: Chuck’s death affects her badly too, with her arc over the next few seasons being less sure of what she wants to be (a Crusading Lawyer vs Con Woman), working on her gaslighting skills and slowly self-destructing while also thinking she’s god and can make choices on what she thinks people deserve.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: She enjoys Jimmy's con games, but not when they start to inch towards major financial scams. Additionally, when she quits HHM to become a solo practitioner, her initial impulse is to offer to pay back the balance of the law school tuition they paid for her. She later does so for real when Howard uses this against her.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • She hated the city where she grew up, fleeing as soon as she could because she wanted more. In "Fun and Games", she flees again, thinking she should have just stayed there and deserves nothing better.
  • She makes an attempt to leave when Chuck wakes up in "Alpine Shepherd Boy", really wanting to avoid the situation, but he tells her to stay.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
  • She tried so hard to not become her mother, and did so (for a time) anyway, being a Functional Addict with alcohol, driving like crazy towards the bad choice road, and making a horrible decision regarding keeping something a secret because she was having too much fun to stop the scam.
  • She keeps Lalo a secret from Jimmy as she’s scared he’ll go back to being fragile, call off the scam and leave her. When that goes terribly wrong, with Howard dead, Cheryl gaslit, Jimmy terrified forever that Lalo will come back and Kim herself about to shoot a man, she breaks it off with him as she feels intensely guilty, just wants to run and feeling like it’s for his own good too.
• Self-Serving Memory: In the rooftop argument she's right about her Undying Loyalty, and Jimmy is projecting his ex-wife/Chuck issues fiercely, but her own downside is defensively acting like he just dragged her into everything, when at least half of the time she's more than happy to dive in even when he didn't want her to.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In an in-character response to what Kim would do with the time machine, it was said go back to the mailroom, keep that relationship with Jimmy going, and both of them getting hardcore therapy.
• Sex for Solace: Inverted. Glenn is bad at sex, only seeming to focus on his own pleasure, but Kim is so focused on wanting to be punished that she takes it anyway and shows no signs of her dominatrix kink. Thankfully Glenn is also a Disposable Love Interest, he's never seen beyond "Waterworks" and she's ready to enjoy herself again.
• Sex Is Violence: She of course is on top, but she bangs Jimmy right after yelling at Howard, tends to make the first move after a scam that turns her on, and slams Jimmy so hard into the court wall that his spine breaks the fire glass.
• Sexy Shirt Switch: Rhea Seehorn has teased that Kim wears the garish suits for "fun" offscreen. She also wears his American Samoa sweatshirt and occasionally his boxer shorts.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: In her final appearance she is much better groomed and dressed than in her previous Florida appearance.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • When the DA informs Kim about Jimmy becoming a cartel lawyer for two infamous cartel members, Nacho and Lalo, and that he's probably getting in over his head… Kim’s response is to correct her that he goes by “Saul” now and gets pissed that the DA called him a scumbag.
  • Even with Chuck in hospital, she still wants to pretend she's not hanging out with Jimmy to Howard, even when he tells her he doesn't care. She still finds Jimmy Forbidden Fruit at this point, and wants so badly to be the good girl By The Book Lawyer getting ahead in her career.
• Shrinking Violet: How she is in Florida. She changes her hair and clothes, acts like an Extreme Doormat, and really doesn't want to be seen or noticed.
• Shoo the Dog: Trying to get him to hate her and let her leave, she purposely tells Jimmy (who she knows full well will feel betrayed with what Chuck did and their marriage promise for no secrets) that she knew about Lalo, and she wasn't keeping it from him to protect him, but because she was having too much fun in the scam.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: As much as All Girls Want Bad Boys still applies, a big reason why she accepts and loves Jimmy is that underneath all the conning, underneath all the weird little changes in him, he's still kind to her, never judges her, accepts her weirdness, fiercely loyal even when he fucks her over, is really funny and makes her feel safe to be herself around him.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Kim usually likes her pantsuits, in various shades of blue, black and getting more garish coloured shirts in early season six. But when she’s in Florida, she wears shapeless outfits, almost looking like an out of place elementary school teacher, and showing how she’s made herself small.
• So Proud of You: She initially does believe that Saul/Gene would stoop that low to implicate her, but she eventually realises he's not doing that at all, her real ex husband is back, proving they weren't just poison like she more feared than believed, the mask is off, and he's confessing to not just crimes (that she honestly doesn't really care about) but actual feelings and damage. As the courtroom descends into chaos, they share a Meaningful Look.
  Rhea: She always was proud of the real him. She mourned and grieved what other people made him feel about himself.
• Sore Loser: Kim can't stand losing, which is one of the reasons why she's such a good Crusading Lawyer, and when it's time for a scam, why she wants to plan everything out so it will go well. It's also one of the reasons why she's ultimately okay with the Mesa Verde scam, as she feels like she deserved them.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: With both HHM and Mesa Verde, it takes a while for her to admit she’s not actually happy, hasn’t been for a while, and it’s only really scams and pro bono work that really give her any joy.
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: After leaving Jimmy in self-hatred, it’s revealed that she moved to Florida and took a job in a sprinklers shop.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: She’s slowly Moving the Goalposts on what she thinks can handle (Rhea Seehorn mentioned that halfway through the series, she realized Kim might actually be okay with what Jimmy does in Breaking Bad), can get away with, and what she’s alright with doing, assuming she can compartmentalize and tell herself she has good intentions.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: While she’s a bit conflicted on it when he's alive, seeing the total damage Chuck did to Jimmy's mindset (and the fact that Jimmy is not processing an ounce of it) makes her loathe the man. When she hears about the insurance act in the finale, she doesn't really care that much, just relieved Jimmy is back and actually talking.
• The Spock: She always wants to work through things practically and logically, and doesn't want to deal with any of the emotions involved. It’s eventually revealed to be a trauma response to a childhood where she had to grow up too fast and con to get any respect.
• Spotting the Thread: Works out that Jimmy did, in fact, help her out by undercutting Chuck via fraud almost immediately, despite backing him up. It's just so Jimmy-in-con-mode to deny involvement and then obfuscate by deflection and bickering with his brother, rather than just simply deny and then play along with the conversation.
• Stepford Smiler: Her version of it, especially after Chuck's suicide, is not dealing with the emotion but trying to fix the problem as practically as she can. Just as long as it doesn't involve actually talking about anything. This life-long trait finally breaks completely in "Waterworks", with agonized sobbing over what she’s done, her and Jimmy's pitiful existences at that moment, a past she hasn't processed and how she feels she ruined her relationship.
• Suddenly Shouting: In the Season 4 episode "Breathe", Kim utterly chews Howard out after he reveals to her and Jimmy that Chuck most likely killed himself, and becomes so angry that she's screaming at him by the end.
  Howard: I don't think that's fair-
  Kim: "FAIR"?! LET'S TALK ABOUT "FAIR"! Hey, let's have Jimmy dig around in the fire-damaged wreck where HIS BROTHER DIED SCREAMING! And let's let him grab a keepsake or two. Yeah, that is SO FAIR!
• Take This Job and Shove It: Sad version. When she's decided to quit the law, feeling like she should have no say in anything, she's called out by the presiding judge for making a scene. She just wanted to tank her reputation a little.
• Technician Versus Performer: With Jimmy. Quite a few of their co-cons rely on her working behind the scenes and his flashiness, and this ends up being a plot point in "Dedicado A Max" where she starts the plan to discredit Mesa Verde, but he goes behind her back next episode and way too far with cringey dramatic libel. She's livid, hating feeling like she's been made the sucker again, but... proposes, so that they have an airtight legal arrangement and whatever shit he does/they do together, the other doesn’t have to testify.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Quits the law, feeling someone like her shouldn't get to decide anything, and works at a sprinklers company doing copy editing. After a despairing breakdown on everything wrong with her life comes catharsis, and she volunteers at legal aid.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: History Repeats with her playing it straight and then subverting it. Her trailer park family was treated like trash so she eventually stopped trying to get punished (though that's always on her mind), kept stealing and did cons of her own, but realized she was going to end up miserable so went to law school and got a job in the mailroom. And in the later seasons of the show, she's sick of Beneath Notice and Condescending Compassion, and she's great at the scams, but it all goes horribly wrong and she flees to Florida in penance (and later doing actual good).
• Theory Tunnel Vision: She’s a marvel at compartmentalizing, whether it’s telling herself she’s doing bad things for a good cause, that the good she does balances out the bad, taking out her guilt for killing Howard on Mike, or trying desperately to not break in her leaving Jimmy because all she really wants is to disappear completely.
• This Is Unforgivable!: She does eventually forgive him, they're not actually over because she does understand how it feels having no other way out, and it helps that Chuck presses her Berserk Button by assuming she'll be on Chuck’s side, but she's pissed for a while about Jimmy lying to her about the commercial.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Kim has a notably vacant, blank stare several times by the conclusion of "Point and Shoot" that Jimmy and Mike notice, horrifically traumatized by the events of the past hours.
• Thrill Seeker: A large part of why Kim progressively involves herself more and more in Jimmy's scams. This becomes especially apparent by season six as she has fewer scruples about engaging in any illegal activity.
• To Be Lawful or Good: It's usually her kindness getting in the way of upholding the law. She thinks Jimmy could be a better person if properly supported, a young father with a family to support might deserve a lighter sentence, and evicting an old man from his home is horrible even if she is legally in the right. However, the pigheadedness of the people she empathizes with also tends to be a real issue.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Downplayed between Kim (more tomboyish) and Paige (more girly). Both Kim and Paige wear a lot of feminine attire when on the clock as lawyers, but with Kim it's more reserved, while Paige wears significantly more necklaces, earrings, and other jewelry than Kim and wears skirts, dresses, and high heels even more often than Kim does. She seems to indulge more in wearing feminine clothes and accessories while Kim sees it more as a necessity. As far as we know, Paige also lacks the mischievous and rule-breaking side that Kim displays in the later seasons of the show. Kim and Paige could be seen as a Tomboy with a Girly Streak and a Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak respectively.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Her regular hairstyle is a ponytail. According to Rhea Seehorn, when it’s tight and high she’s in business mode and in control, but when it’s loose or down she’s more likely to be having an internal breakdown.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She'll wear the business skirts and heels to look the part of a high powered career woman, but even just having her hair down is a sign in her brain as being too vulnerable. Which is just one of the reasons why her Florida Darkest Hour, clamping herself down to be a housewife, was so tragic.
• Too Clever by Half: By “Point and Shoot”, because Lalo has realized she’s smarter than Jimmy, Mike’s earlier belief that she’s made of sterner stuff than he is, and even Gus trusting her enough to ask what happened, she knows more about the actual criminal world than she ever wanted to.
• Took a Level in Badass: She's scared as hell to confront Howard in "Pimento", and looks like she's going to cry when he lashes out at her. By season six, "Kim Wexler yelling at men" is almost a Running Gag.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: As Kim becomes increasingly comfortable with engaging in shady activities with Jimmy, she becomes spiteful towards Howard Hamlin to the point of wanting to ruin his reputation and possibly a career.
• Tough Love: The actual kind unlike what Chuck thinks he's doing. While she does enable Jimmy and think making him worse is hot, she also tries to help him get what he says he wants without calling him worthless and knows he doesn't actually have to be the worst to get some form of approval. And it's her, not Chuck, that gets proven right in the end, as he follows in her Cheryl confession footsteps taking actual responsibility.
• Toxic Friend Influence: As the series progresses, Kim starts to show traits of this. She's the one who instigates the plot against Howard in season six. Although Jimmy has reservations against this and is willing to call it off, he decides to go ahead with the plan for the thrill of conning and humiliating Howard with Kim. The series also makes it clear that the Saul Goodman persona he takes on has direct influence from her.
• Tragic Villain: What she becomes in “Fun and Games”. Half-correct, half just wanting to vanish, she gives up everything, thinking she deserves to be nothing more than the cashier girl in her hometown; because she knows what she’s capable of (gaslighting a widow when she didn’t have to, willing to shoot someone to protect Jimmy, humiliating Howard) and realized how scarily good she was at all of it.
• Tranquil Fury: Does this a lot when telling people off, in contrast to Jimmy's shock and awe. Especially in Season 5 to Kevin Wachtell when she calls him out for ignoring her advice.
• Trauma Button: Her mother was an emotionally abusive Womanchild who pretended to be decent in public but would never actually give her safety, and so when men decide to know what’s best for her, Jimmy makes her look like an idiot, or Chuck comes off like a Villain with Good Publicity, she reacts badly.
• Troubled Child: Kim even had issues as a kid, watching and eventually following her mother into alcoholism, feeling like she had to be self-reliant because mom was a flake, and at first stealing because she wanted to be punished, but continuing on and becoming a High-School Hustler because she felt like that was the only way to get ahead.
• True Blue Femininity: Is constantly shown wearing blue, which fits into a conservative legal setting.
• Uncertain Doom: Non-lethal example. Even after regaining a semblance of her old self, Cheryl's lawsuit still threatens her financial stability. With Kim's affidavit as proof and a massive advantage in money and legal connections, Cheryl could very easily leave Kim poor and in debt for the rest of her life.
• Undying Loyalty: Kim will always stand up for Jimmy, no matter what he's done, who's accusing him, or how much better off she might be if she cut ties. Jimmy's own brother Chuck, a living legend in Albuquerque's lawyer community, accuses Jimmy of forging documents? Kim defends him, even when she knows Chuck is correct. That same legend manipulates Jimmy into a hearing that could leave him disbarred? You'd better believe Kim rushes to be his defense attorney. Jimmy pulls a fast one on Kim during a scheme of theirs? Kim suggests they get married to take advantage of spousal privilege so neither would ever have to testify against each other and they can be 100% open from then on. A cartel member who Kim knows had recently killed a man shows up to interrogate Jimmy? How else would Kim respond but by giving Lalo such a thorough dressing-down about putting Jimmy on the spot for Lalo's own shortage of personnel he can trust that he soon sees her reasoning and leaves? Insulting Jimmy is one of the fastest ways to turn Kim's full wrath on you.
  • Kim is shown in "Point and Shoot" to even be willing to murder someone in order to protect Jimmy.
  • In "Fun and Games", Kim, no longer able to stand what terrible acts the two of them are capable of when together, breaks ties with Jimmy for good. Even so, it's clear Kim believes she no longer deserves Jimmy's love and that their split would benefit them both in the long run. Her loyalty remains, but it's gained a new definition for her.
  • In "Breaking Bad", after years of self-enforced no contact, she called Francesca after the events of "Granite State" to not so subtly ask if her ex-husband was even alive.
  • Even when she has no love for all the identities that Jimmy is hiding under, she still protects him while confessing to Cheryl, despite Gene’s goading that she can do whatever she wants.
  • After Jimmy goes to jail, she’s there with love and a cigarette, as it’s revealed her lawyer card doesn’t expire. Obviously she has to leave eventually, but there’s a strong implication that she’ll be back as much as she can.
• Ungrateful Bitch: Averted. Howard tries to imply this. He goes on about how he put Kim through law school and trained her up - conveniently forgetting how he reassigned her to Antarctica twice (the far office in Season 1 and doc review in Season 2), engineered the situation where Chuck poaches Mesa Verde from her and tried to get her friend Jimmy imprisoned and disbarred. He gets the Shut Up, Hannibal!! that he deserves for that.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • If Kim had postponed D-Day as Jimmy suggested, then Howard likely wouldn't have shown up at the apartment to confront her and Jimmy on the same night that Lalo decided to pay another visit.
  • Imploding herself and looking for an outlet, and wanting to make her PTSD-ridden husband happy, she encourages and helps cement Saul Goodman’s traits in the sequel series, from his clothes to his car to his office. As Tatlock said, she created Saul, who created Walter White, to distract himself from the pain of losing her.
  • It’s revealed she told Jesse that Saul was actually a good lawyer (though she meant something else, that Jimmy was good when she knew him), which makes Jesse recommend him to Walter, which leads to Saul getting retraumatised thinking Lalo’s guys had kidnapped him, which along with the greed and wanting glory, wanting a Lalo he thinks he can control and won’t hurt him, but also a distraction from all that horror, leads to… well, you know.
• Uptight Loves Wild: Kim has a very distinctly straight-laced mask she puts onto the rest of the world, and enjoys Jimmy for a lot of reasons, one of them being she can let loose around him.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Not violent, but when danger walks into her home and threatens her husband (and her too, but she doesn't care), she will stand up, absolutely fearless, and talk you out of her home. She's also willing to kill a man she had no idea existed, just to keep Jimmy alive. Even when she has Chuck on a pedestal, she's more aware of the damage he's doing to Jimmy than Jimmy was (as he's had a life of it, and just accepted putdowns as long as Chuck wasn't being openly nasty), and it doesn't take long for her to tell Chuck where to go.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Kim's mom was an alcoholic, irresponsible Womanchild, and Kim had to be both her own parent and parent her mother too. This causes problems later in life, as she's so fixated on not being like her mom that she becomes her anyway, and she's stunted in her own way, almost wanting a second chance at childhood that shows in scams that increase in nastiness.
• Wardrobe Flaw Of Characterisation: Her suits are always slightly mismatched in terms of colour. Intentionally, as Kim wants to look good and professional, but has grown up poor and isn't entirely certain on how to fit in, so she just grabs off the rack.
• Weakness Turns Her On:
  • There are a lot of reasons why she loves Jimmy, he’s smart and cunning like her, and he makes her laugh and feel safe, but the fact that he’s subby in bed is a huge bonus. Naturally, he’s happy to play into it sometimes, bringing out the playful begging and Puppy-Dog Eyes if he needs something from her.
  • It's teased that her favorite genre of film ("hot men trapped in the snow") is down to this reason.
• Wet Blanket Wife: Subverted and deconstructed. The creators were very aware of the reaction to Skyler, and with the help of Rhea Seehorn, made it clear (after the actress didn’t just want to be considered moral center) that Kim isn’t some nagging Morality Chain, that she has conflicts but loves and enables and enjoys, but the downside is that she helps him become Saul. She also gets really angry about being considered this in-universe.
• What Does She See in Him?: Several characters wonder aloud what a straight-laced, hard-working, beautiful woman like Kim sees in a lowlife like Jimmy. Kevin Wachtell tells her "You could do a whole lot better" while Lalo thinks Jimmy is punching above his weight and is clearly impressed. The truth is that Jimmy and Kim have much more in common than people realize, and while Kim could have her pick of any of the wealthy but charmless older men who offer to buy her drinks at Forque, she'd much rather call her Lovable Rogue to help her pull a scam on them instead.
  • This is deconstructed by Howard Hamlin in "Plan and Execution". After questioning Kim's decision to choose a life of scamming with Jimmy, he has a moment of clarity, realizing that they both enjoy scamming and do it for fun:
    "You're perfect for each other."
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • While more or less OK with extracurricular cons that don't directly impact their sphere of work, she calls Jimmy out when he falsifies evidence and puts his (and her) career in jeopardy.
  • Delivers another fine one to slap Chuck in the face with the observation about how much he's treated his younger brother for years has directly impacted how Jimmy's turned out. She's right, even though she's also lying.
  • Then after calling Chuck out, she gives Jimmy repeated punches on his arms to let him know that, yes, she knew he did tamper with the Mesa Verde documents after specifically telling him not to intervene.
  • She gives a non-verbal one in just her look towards Jimmy when he throws Howard's guilt for Chuck's suicide back in his face.
  • Not long after that, she chews out Howard for making what she perceives to be empty gestures towards Jimmy to assuage his guilt without any consideration for Jimmy's headspace or his broken relationship with Chuck. These include informing Jimmy that Chuck's probable cause of death was suicide by setting his house on fire mere hours after it happened, offering Jimmy a posh position on a scholarship committee that everyone knows Chuck would never have allowed, and giving Kim a letter to Jimmy from Chuck that she can only assume is "one last screw-you from beyond the grave."
  • After an entire season of dealing with Jimmy's shut off attitude towards his brother's death, his continued descent into the criminal world the consequences of which he keeps dragging Kim into, acting out in front of her law partners, and otherwise downplaying Kim's support in favor of his idealized version of what their relationship should be, Kim lets Jimmy have it:
    Jimmy: "There you go, kick a man when he's down!"
    Kim: "Jimmy, you are always down."
  • When Jimmy blindsides Kim during their Mesa Verde commercial scam by demanding way more money than they had initially agreed on, Kim lets him know how betrayed she feels. She lays down an ultimatum: either break things off and remember the good times they had... or get married so they can take advantage of spousal privilege.
  • She gets several of her own in season five and six, Acker calling her a horrible person, Rich Spotting the Thread on a scam, Howard calling her out on "this is the life you chose", Mike telling her she has to continue the lie she was already telling about Howard, Cheryl not believing said lie (until Kim gaslights her), and Cheryl again at the laughable notion that "Howard didn’t suffer".
• What You Are in the Dark: In "Point and Shoot", she has the option to escape, and a police car is right next to her when she's at the traffic lights, but instead she doesn't tell them anything, and continues onto (intend to at least) shoot Gus Fring.
• Womanchild: Flashbacks show Kim is stunted in her own way, as she's in her thirties but still feeling everything she did as a child, repressed, wanting to act out but also punishing herself, recreating her relationship with a much nicer version of her mother, and is an angry martyr who watches and learns. A lot of her thrill seeking comes off as wanting another chance of actual childhood.
• Workaholic: As part of her Work Hard, Play Hard deal. When she’s afraid about Lalo still being out there, she channels it into taking twenty hard PD cases in one day, and generally finds it hard to relax in a way that isn't drinking, conning or smoking.
• Work Hard, Play Hard: Strong hints of this. She works her tail off and blows off steam by hanging out with Jimmy... and occasionally taking part in his cons. Bars are often involved, not just movie night and pedicures. It's also hinted when she starts calling up old law school friends, as one of the conversations seems to involve the person she's talking to recalling some drunken escapades.
• The Woman Behind the Man: Acts as a Saul Goodman PR manager in early season six, accentuating the traits he’ll have in the next series, and for bigger scams, works on the technicals while Jimmy shows off center stage.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: She plays a slightly useless, deeply anxious Missing Mom with a sprained ankle and a deadbeat brother looking after her child to gain sympathy from a mark.
• Wounded Gazelle Warcry: “Point and Shoot” seemingly confirmed her “The Guy For This” story about having to stay ahead of the rent and run out with no shoes on when her mother said they had to go, but she also never denied Acker when he said she’d say anything to get what she wanted.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: As Rhea Seehorn mentioned, there’s a wall coming in the form of Breaking Bad, and Kim has no idea what she’s running into.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Double subverted. Chuck steals Mesa Verde away from her, which is horribly disappointing. She gets them back, but eventually realizes it’s a Soul-Crushing Desk Job.
• Yaoi Fangirl: She knows all about Jimmy's (in more ways than one) partnership with Marco, and is perfectly happy with this.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: The flashback which opens "Axe and Grind" shows a nervous teenage Kim Wexler sitting in the back room of a department store where she has just been caught attempting to shoplift a necklace and a pair of earrings. The manager brings in Kim's mother, who apologizes profusely and puts on a big display of being disappointed in her daughter. The manager accepts the apology and decides not to press charges, letting Kim go with a warning. As they leave the store, Kim's frowning mother suddenly breaks into a smirk, before telling Kim "I didn't know you had it in you" and appearing to actually be proud of her daughter. She then presents Kim with the jewelry she attempted to steal, having swiped another from the store. Kim looks more guilty and ashamed at her mother's reaction than she did at getting caught.
• You Remind Me of X:
  • For all the parallels she has with Walt, she sees herself in Jesse Pinkman, talking with him before she runs off to Florida, and aware he could (and will) go down the self-destructive path she did.
  • It’s implied that a lot of the condescending men who think they know what’s best for her, especially Howard, remind her of her father.

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"Hi, Jimmy."